


Ned's Family Reunion

by Salamon2



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Family Bonding, Family Drama, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Family Issues, Family Secrets, Gen, Stark Family Reunion(s) (ASoIaF), back from the dead trope
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2019-08-03 22:52:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16334768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salamon2/pseuds/Salamon2
Summary: One morning Ned wakes up (before Robert arrives at Winterfell) and finds that all his dead family members are appearing all over Winterfell. First his father Rickard, then his brother Brandon, sister Lyanna, and then his mother Lyarra--each appearing with no memories from after they left Winterfell the final time before their deaths. Now Ned is forced to confront his own choices as a lord and re-examine his relationship with his past and future as he comes to term with members of his family he never got the proper chance to say goodbye to. In addition, all his family members begin to cause trouble for poor Ned and the current generation of Starks as they all interact with one another. Fun times always come at family reunions. ;)Originally posted under my "Bits and Pieces" collection, it now has a new home of its own outside the collection by popular demand, since it's been growing beyond the original premise.





	1. EDDARD I

**EDDARD**

 

A loud rapping at the door awoke him from his slumber. Tiredly, Ned shifted his bleary eyes to the window to see what hour it was, and groaned when he barely saw a hint of red in the early morning hours.

 

"Gods," he let escape from his mouth. And then the unbearable heat of Cat's room began to oppress him as it always did. He rolled the furs off of him.

 

“What is it?” groaned Cat from next to him.

 

"My lady, we cannot find Lord Eddard in his rooms,” replied the maid’s voice from the other side of the door.

 

“Lord Stark shall be with you anon,” called out Cat who the next instant snuggled in close to him, pressing her nakedness against his back, with only a fur between them. She then rested her chin against his shoulder and wrapped her arms about him, telling him that he was to stay put in her bed.

 

Feeling himself as hard and stiff in the morning as he usually was, Ned cursed the servants’ timing. “Cat, I can’t tarry long… no matter how much I’d like to.”

 

“A little patience never hurt anyone,” appealed Cat as she nuzzled her head against his. His sword was still unsheathed and now beginning to bother him—especially the way with how Cat was lightly moving her fingertips across his flat gut and then down further and closer to… Gods! there’d be no way he’d leave this room.

 

“You’re killing me Cat…” he moaned.

 

“Then come into my castle my lord,” she teased into his ear and he was turning around and soon underneath the furs again with Cat, kissing her as his rough paws of hands began to gently give her as much stimulation as he’d received from her. He began with gentle touches around her teats and then slowly, let his sword hand work its way south, beginning with the same light touches she’d given him—only on the inside of her thigh, slowly working in and moving closer. She began to writhe and he felt his need for her grow. As he stroked around her moat she pulled even closer to him, his sword just beneath her castle as she gripped his back tightly—her nails nearly digging into him.

 

“A good lord does not keep his lady waiting long Ned,” she nearly growled in his ear like the she-wolf he’d made her with the exchange of cloaks, and so he entered her castle and they began their joining.

 

And just as they were both about to finish, once again the rapping at the door and the maid’s voice returned, “My lord and lady, I am sorry to disturb you, but you both are needed in the courtyard now!”

 

They were already too far gone to stop, but the mood was definitely soured. They came, but the pleasure in doing so was lessened by the knowledge that they wouldn’t be able to finish with an embrace as they often did when finished.

 

Sighing, Ned rose and stumbled over to the window as was his custom, throwing it open to cool the room, looking down into the courtyard and freezing still at the sight he saw down below—a sight he’d thought never to see again in all his life. An older man was pacing about yelling at any and all servants that even dared to sneak by him without addressing him.

 

“Where the bloody hell is my mount! I ordered it ready at dawn!” demanded a stern voice Ned had thought never to hear again.

 

“Who is causing a ruckus in the courtyard, Ned?” asked Cat as he heard her sit up.

 

“My father…” he answered, amazed.


	2. ROBB I & LYANNA I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robb wakes up to find unwanted company in his bed. Lyanna rises early to find Winterfell isn't as she remembers it.

**ROBB**

 

It was definitely warmer than he was used to under his furs. The next moment it registered to him that he felt something moving on the bed. Likely Bran or Rickon—Rickon was still half terrified of his pup, and Bran would sometimes sneak into his bed if he had a bad dream—something which seemed to happen more often now—figures of white and blue plaguing his nightmares. His pup that he’d yet to name just yet, was curled up next to him with his paws sticking out over the edge of the bed. Suddenly his brother shifted again in the bed pushing him. It definitely was not Bran or Rickon then. Was it Jon? Jon and Robb hadn’t shared a bed since they were young children. What could he be doing here? Robb turned over inadvertently knocking over his pup that fell to the floor with a thump, followed by a yelp as Robb turned over to see the other half of his bed occupied by an older man. He almost thought it was father until he got a better look at the man’s face and saw there was no fleck of greys in his hair. He was all Stark in features, and rather muscular. Had Uncle Benjen arrived earlier than promised and without rooms prepared been told to take in with him? It had happened before. Besides, it had been years since Robb had seen Uncle Benjen—but he didn’t remember him being so burly—nor that he had slept without any clothes on.

 

Just then Robb’s pup managed after many attempts to pull himself back up onto the bed, grunting and nuzzling for Robb to move before stopping, taking notice of the man in the bed and oddly enough, growling.

 

The man, who Robb had assumed had been asleep through all of this, frowned and without opening his eyes, asked exasperatedly, “Ben, did you sneak out one of Farlen’s pups from the kennels again?”

 

“I’m not Ben,” answered Robb, nervous but ready to challenge this stranger as to why he was in his room. Well there went his Uncle Benjen theory.

 

The stranger’s eyes snapped open and grey eyes met blue.

 

“Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my room?!” exclaimed the man at once.

 

“Robb Stark, heir to Winterfell, and it’s my room!” proclaimed Robb proudly.

 

“Stark? You look more like a Tul—” and suddenly the man stopped himself and grew quite silent, asking “Is this a dream? Are you what my son would look like if I married Catelyn Tully?”

 

“That is my mother, aye,” answered Robb, which seemed to upset the man slightly, with Robb then adding, “And I am son to Lord Eddard Stark.”

 

At that the man burst out laughing. Robb didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing.

 

  
~*~*~*~*~ ****  
  
  
LYANNA

 

Lyanna had risen early to sneak into the godswood for one more spar with Benjen before they went south and she would have to pretend for Brandon’s sake to know nothing of combat—less father hear of it, and she lose that privilege as well. However Benjen hadn’t been there by the usual spot by the pool. Figuring that he’d likely overslept, Lyanna had sighed and hurried to go and drag him from bed before they lost all opportunity, but as she was ready to enter the courtyard she heard her father yelling at the servants, utterly wild with anger over something about expecting his horse to be ready at dawn. Had he changed his mind and decided to come south with them and leave Benjen here in Winterfell? That was unfair—Benjen was looking forward to the trip, it’d be his first time attending a tourney, hers as well. It was something that they looked forward to doing together. It was at moments like these she hated the maxim her father constantly muttered about there always needing to be a Stark in Winterfell.

 

She’d simply have to convince father to see it as he had before. Brandon and Ned were men grown, and she had already bled for the first time a year and a moon past. They were old enough to look after themselves and their baby brother without getting into too much trouble. She’d just about made up her mind to confront her father now instead of waiting for when his temper had cooled when she heard him exclaim “Ned! Gods boy, how did you arrive from the Eyrie so—never mind. It’s a good thing you’re here!”

 

Ned had arrived in the night as a surprise for them? Lyanna could not stand it, and she immediately hurried out to the courtyard where her father and brother were, with father giving Ned what appeared to be a relieved hug—which was an odd sight to see. Father had never shown a sign of affection to any of them since mother had died—to see him now hugging Ned must mean something was wrong—terribly wrong. And further, upon seeing her brother, Lyanna noticed there was something odd about him as well. Hadn’t he been eye level with father upon his last visit to Winterfell? Now he was a few good inches shorter—but this thought immediately dissipated upon seeing the face of the elder brother she loved so dear, and to whom she could tell anything. She ran up

 

“Lya? You’re here?! I’d heard word that—godsdamn the Targaryens! And I’ll have the guards who were on duty last night brought to me in chains for failing to announce that two of my children returned to me!”

 

“What has the royal family done now, father?” she asked exasperatedly, knowing he’d been sending many ravens off to the Eyrie, Riverrun, and Storm’s End for quite some time.

 

“They’ve spread lies about having abducted you and used it to take Brandon hostage in the Riverlands! Thank the gods you only returned home. Ned, can Jon and Robert be counted upon to fulfill the alliance we agreed to? Or does he want you marrying one of his Waynwood nieces again before he commits himself?”

 

“M—my name isn’t Ned. He’s my father. I’m Jon… Jon Snow,” muttered the boy who looked so like Ned. He bit his lip in a manner quite unlike Ned, but more like she was want to do when nervous. Ned had always teased her for nibbling at her mouth—as he called it.

 

“I don’t know what Robert has put you up to, Ned, but this is a poor time to be making a joke!” scolded Lyanna with a roll of her eyes.

 

The look of shock on Ned’s face made Lyanna appreciate just how well he’d learned to hide his thoughts behind a veneer before. Clearly there was something wrong here.


	3. RICKARD I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rickard awaits answers in the Great Hall and encounters some of his grandchildren.

**RICKARD**  
  
  
He sat in his chair—the old throne of winter in the Great Hall. Much seemed changed about the castle since the night previous. Somehow a Sept had sprouted overnight in the courtyard, and brighter tapestries hung on the walls crudely embroidered with celebrations of Stark history. He felt far more at home here, sitting among the tapestries depicting Bran the Builder, Theon the Hungry Wolf, and many of the other great men of his house. Though Rickard was left confused by a newer tapestry which featured bells of all things. The embroidery on it was exquisite and more refined than the other tapestries--likely southron made.  
  
He had been making ready for riding south for Brandon's wedding, at least until the servants had impeded him. Then he'd come accross Lyanna leaving the godswood instead of south of the Neck, claiming that she'd yet to leave for Harrenhal. And then here was this boy who looked like his Ned, but called himself a Snow and said the year was 297. Servants who either looked older than he remembered them, or were unrecognizable to him confirmed the boy's story, which only seemed to be more likely when another sight came running out of the Great Keep, a younger version of Lyanna--at least that's what he'd thought she was until she'd asked "Jon" who they were.  
  
297... gods to have missed the span of six and ten years. Impossible, and yet, here he was. All that "Jon" told him was that they'd both died in the Rebellion.  
  
Lyanna, as always spoke her mind too freely. That was her grandmother's Flint blood in her, of that Rickard had little doubt. "I can't believe Ned of all of us would have a bastard."  
  
"Lyanna," grumbled Rickard automatically.   
  
"Forgive me father... nephew... but Brandon? Aye. That I could see easily. In fact I'm sure that he got a maid big with her daughter when he visited Winterfell for Benjen's nameday. Oh and where's Benjen?"  
  
"Lyanna!"  
  
All the while "Jon" stood there, as stiff and quiet as his father ever was as a boy. If he was Ned's bastard that was, but that Rickard would discover from Ned.  
  
"The truth is... Aunt, I am here and my father has claimed me and raised me with his trueborn children. As for Uncle Benjen, he joined the Night's Watch--though he does visit us when the Lord Commander has business with my father."   
  
At that Rickard frowned. A Snow being raised among the pack? True, there was the precedent for it with Lonnel Snow of course, but Lonny had been... well, a swamp wolf and half-crannogman. And while the rest of the North did not loathe the crannogmen, there was no great respect or love for them either. So Lonny had been easy to discount, to ignore among the large pack. But a bastard who looked the spitting image of his father and raised alongside his trueborn siblings? That was odd. Rather odd.  
  
"Who's your mother?" Rickard asked, curious as to who had made Ned forget himself.  
  
"Jon" flushed red in that moment and looked down at his boots.  
  
Rickard sighed, "Come now. There's no shame in having a whore for a mother. You're not at fault for what she chose to make of her life."  
  
Jon shook his head and with a voice that cracked answered, "I don't know. Truly. My father has not spoken to me of her at all. He refuses to even tell me her name."   
  
"That's cruel!" objected Lyanna. She then rose and hugged "Jon"  
  
She then whispered rather loudly, no doubt to annoy him, "Don't worry, I'll have it out of him for you. Ned could never refuse me anything."  
  
Or it could possibly a smart decision--especially if the boy's mother were noble. By not acknowledging who his mother were, there would be less complications about future inheritances. But then why raise him at Winterfell?  
  
Lyanna was making the boy uncomfortable, so he intervened. "You'll leave things be, Lyanna. Jon is your nephew. Let his father deal with the matter how he will."  
  
Besides there were always other ways of discovering the truth. Servants were always prone to gossip and imaginings of their lords. Surely some of them would have wrinkled out the mystery by now.   
  
"Who's yelling in here?" asked another voice, and Rickard turned to see what looked to be a ghost. It was a girl, though she looked almost a boy in her disheveled clothes.  
  
"Jon... who are they?" asked the younger Lyanna.  
  
"Arya... you're not going to believe this, but this is our Aunt Lyanna and our grandfather..."   
  
The girl looked at both himself and Lyanna with scrutiny.  
  
When she finally did respond to her half-brother, she said, "But they're dead. They have statues in the crypt."  
  
We both have statues in the crypt? Ned... what have you been doing?  
  
"Aye, and yet here they are. You've seen their statues as much as I have. It's almost impossible to believe..." admitted Jon.  
  
"Gods... she looks exactly like I used to!" exclaimed Lyanna as she took in the sight of the younger girl. Lyanna then abandoned Jon to look over the younger she-wolf.  
  
"No I don't."  
  
Lyanna knelt down to the girl's height and said, "I remember how I looked well enough, and to see you, is almost like looking in a Myrish glass from many namedays ago."  
  
"But you're pretty. I'm just Arya Horseface..." said the girl.  
  
"Who said that?!" demanded Lyanna.  
  
Jon however seemed to know, and a frown stretched across his face as he said, "What else have Beth and Jeyne been saying?"  
  
Arya however just turned her head to the side and didn't answer--that was one habit Lyanna and her younger lookalike did have in common.  
  
"Who are Beth and Jeyne?" questioned Lyanna, turning to "Jon".  
  
"Jon" explained to Lyanna, "Beth Cassel and Jeyne Poole. Ser Rodrik's daughter and the steward's daughter. They're friends of Sansa, our sister."  
  
"And Sansa just lets them say things like that?!" exclaimed Lyanna.  
  
This was getting out of hand. Again, Lyanna was making a grandchild of his uncomfortable. But that was Lyanna--always sticking her nose into things where it often didn't belong. One of these days it was going to get her into trouble.   
  
"Arya? Did I hear the name correctly?" asked Rickard in an attempt to distract her from Lyanna's attention.  
  
"Aye. That is my name." answered the girl with a stare that almost challenged him. She may look like Lyanna come again, but there was a bit more steel to this little she-wolf than Lyanna had. Not that Lyanna didn't have steel underneath as well, but her steel was usually kept hidden, slipping out only when provoked. Here the sharp edge of his granddaughter was raw and present with not even the pretension of guile.  
  
"I can't believe Ser Rodrik and Vayon would raise their daughters to be so... mean!" protested Lyanna, convincing herself of some grand speech or other she would deliver to them.  
  
He admitted under his breath, "I will say this, you have your namesake's manner of speaking...as blunt as a battle axe."   
  
"Really? How else am I like her?" asked Arya as she took a few steps forward to Rickard.  
  
Rickard asked "Hasn't your father spoken of your great-grandmother to you?" His mother-in-law had only seen fit to die after Ned's second visit from the Eyrie.  
  
"No... though Old Nan used to say Bran climbs the walls like she used to..."  
  
"Old Nan still lives! She must be ancient by now," stated Lyanna. And like that her mood had shifted as easily as the direction of the wind.  
  
"But beyond that, nothing?" Rickard paused for a moment, something was wrong here. Why had Ned told so little of their family to his children? Clearly he had some things to discuss with his son.  
  
"Lord Stark! Lord Stark!" cried a voice from out in the corridor that was accompanied by the heavy sound of footfalls. It was just then that a servant ran into the hall. She looked about confused.  
  
"Say what you will, woman!" snapped Rickard when the confusion on the woman's face had gone from mildly entertaining to downright frustrating to behold.  
  
"A... a Lady has appeared in the birthing chamber... my... lord. She says... she says she's Lady Lyarra."  
  
At the sound of Lyarra's name, Rickard stood up immediately. Lyarra was here? Gods, she'd died giving birth to the babe after Benjen--she and the babe both had perished. The babe had come sooner than expected and Maester Walys fetched too late because the damn midwife hadn't trusted the "bastard maester". Some woman that Lyarra had taken a shine to as Rickard had courted the opinion of Hoster for a potential betrothal between their houses. The woman was distrustful of all "Southrons" and spoke of how the North had been better before the dragons had come to the continent as though she'd lived then. Lyarra had brought her in to spite him when he'd sent Brandon to foster in Barrowton. The cruel thing being that Walys had said that if he had been sent for, Lyarra and the babe might have lived.  
  
"Fetch the maester, immediately!" ordered Rickard to the servant who with a quick nod of the head scurried out of the hall and into the courtyard. He wasn't going to lose Lyarra again, not if he had any say in the matter.  
  
Rickard then turned to Jon and said, "Fetch your father, I must see to my wife." "Jon" nodded his head and ushering Arya out with him, departed the Great Hall. Lyanna stood there aghast at the news.  
  
As he crossed the courtyard headed for the Great Keep, all Rickard could wonder was if the gods would be so cruel as to give Lyarra back only to take her again.


	4. LYARRA I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyarra meets Catelyn and discovers her own children have grown up without her.

**LYARRA**  
  
  
She had not left the birthing chambers since giving birth to little Rodrik. However an endless stream of visitors had come to see her since the Maester had kept the infection at bay—or so he said. He’d also said to keep little Rodrik as warm as she possibly could. She did not recognize this Maester, he wasn’t the flowery Southron that was for sure. Rickard had visited her immediately, looking as if he’d aged a decade and a little more since her confinement had begun. And he wasn’t the only one. Soon her little Lya and Brandon had come to check her and their new brother as well—and gods, where had her little girl and boy gone? How had they come to be replaced with these… these… double walkers who talked as if they knew her and yet she could hardly recognize them.  
  
  
Rickard talked of being brought across time, that he himself had not been from this time either, but now he was here in the year 297, though he was from 281. Gods, what a tangled mess this was. Truth be told Lyarra thought herself half dreaming, until Ned had come and seen her. He had been just six namedays when last she’d seen him, and now… gods, the man who’d entered was just as quiet as her pup had always been, just as serious, and they stood and walked exactly the same. Seeing Ned a man grown, and older than herself… gods she’d begged to wake up from this nightmare there and then. Why had the Gods been so cruel? Who was this old man with more salt than pepper in his hair calling himself her husband? Aye she could see he’d once been Rickard, but who was he now? Why had the gods taken her children from her and given her these strangers in return? They did not need her anymore. They did not truly want her either—to be sure they were happy and glad to see her, but after a hug (at her insistence—to ensure she wasn’t dreaming) and a few words, the awkward silence always fell over her. But Rodrik needed her, aye. That he did. And they couldn’t take him away from her—she wouldn’t let them. She’d be damned to let Rodrik go and have some ancient old man come in and claim to have once been the suckling babe at her breast. Having aged all those years in the blink of an eye.  
  
  
It was into this environment that a lady calling herself Lady Catelyn Stark entered the room. The woman was red of hair, blue of eyes, and pale of skin, and dressed like a Northerner, except for a silly neck ruff that served no purpose beyond a frivolous fashion choice as far as Lyarra was concerned. A Southron in spirit, if not birth as well, she’d determined.  
  
  
“I know this all must be strange to you, my lady,” she began respectfully.  
  
  
“To say the least!” snapped Lyarra in return.  
  
  
“But that being given, I would like to answer any questions you may have… well, what would you like me to call you?” asked Catelyn.  
  
  
“You’re Ned’s wife, aren’t you?” asked Lyarra.  
  
  
“Aye.”  
  
  
Lyarra had no intention letting up on her so-called gooddaughter, “And you’re a southron, right?”  
  
  
“Aye again, you might know me better as Catelyn Tully, mayhaps?”  
  
  
That name sounded familiar. Lyarra racked her memories to find something, and eventually came up with a memory.  
  
  
“But I thought you were to inherit Riverrun? Rickard used to talk about betrothing your little sister to Brandon to me. I said it wouldn’t do.”  
  
  
Catelyn smiled and said, “I am afraid the birth of a much younger brother put aside all training I had been given in preparation for being my father’s heir.”  
  
  
“More’s the pity,” huffed Lyarra. For one thing she wouldn’t be here, and her grandchildren wouldn’t be half southron. But what was done was done.  
  
  
“You may call me Lady Arra—all of my family used to call me as such. Tell me, how has Ned been as a husband to you?”  
  
  
Catelyn blinked several times, caught off guard at first by her directness before shaking her head and saying, “In some ways he is all that a noblewoman could want in a husband. He can be kind, gentle, thoughtful, loving, and fierce when he needs to be. While he may be a little too serious too often, he has it in him to appreciate a good jape. He’s attentive to the children far more than I expected of any lord.”  
  
  
“Yes, yes, and as a husband does he see to your needs?”  
  
  
Catelyn blinked once, twice, thrice, four times before she managed to ask, “Excuse me?”  
  
  
Obviously not.  
  
  
Sighing before speaking she began, “When I first married Rickard, there were some things that I needed to teach him to make the act more engaging than a simple thrust and exit he was used to. It was laborious, but fruitful for us both in the end, given how many children we’ve had. I always told myself that when my sons would show the first signs of becoming men, I’d tell them—for their and their future wives’ own good—how to please a lady wife without that awkward muddle I had to go through. Mine own mother had enough sense to tell me a few things before her death, and I had much to add that she did not know. So I ask you again, does he please you in your bed, gooddaughter?”  
  
  
“Aye. Our first coupling was… well, the only thing good to come out of it was our son, Robb.”  
  
  
Lyarra nodded in approval—good, they were fertile. To have had a child upon the first coupling, aye very fertile indeed. “Then he must have done something right, for a woman cannot conceive unless she herself finds pleasure in the act. You did eventually find pleasure in it, I trust?”  
  
  
Catelyn, “If it is all right with you, I think I’d like to refrain from discussing my marriage bed with your son any further.”  
  
  
Southron prude. A fish is the perfect sigil for her. She’s likely as cold as one in bed.  
  
  
Rodrik had had his fill and began to whine, needing to be burped, so she slung him over her shoulder and began patting his little back as she asked, “And how many children have you and my son had beyond Robb?”  
  
  
“Our next eldest is our daughter, Sansa. She looks rather like myself when I was her age. Robb takes after my brother and father in looks. After Sansa is Arya,”  
  
  
Lyarra flinched to hear her own mother’s name uttered once more. In a way that only awoke a small tender feeling within her. Ned, her Ned, had named a daughter after her mother. He hadn’t forgotten her as she’d feared might happen.  
  
  
Catelyn continued, “Arya looks rather like yourself I’d imagine, when you were younger.”  
  
  
“Then he chose the wrong name for the little wolf pup. My mother had hair as red as yours. It would have been more fitting to name her Sansa and your Sansa, Arya,” commented Lyarra.  
  
  
Catelyn looked at her oddly then, and asked once again, “Truly? Your mother had hair as red as mine?”  
  
  
“Aye, nearly all Flints of the Mountains are red-heads. That’s how you can tell the different Flint branches apart, you know. The Flints of Widow’s Watch are brown of hair, the Flints of Flint’s Finger are black of hair, and the Flints of the mountains are all red of hair—only they call it being “kissed by fire” I think. Or something like that.”  
  
  
Catelyn stated as though rather relieved, “Then that would explain why all our children, except Arya, are red of hair.”  
  
  
“All, but Arya? The Gods are surely saying something by that!” she exclaimed as Rodrik at long last let out a nice big burp and she nestled her little wolf pup back close to her body, to keep him warm.  
  
  
“And that’s all, so far? Only three?” queried Lyarra.  
  
  
And only one of them a boy.  
  
  
Catelyn shook her head and said, “Nay, I have two little boys of mine own beyond Arya. There’s Brandon, though we call him Bran, and Rickon. I would like to have another soon, but the Gods have yet to see me quicken with child since Rickon came off my breast.”  
  
  
Lyarra exclaimed with a grin, “Three boys and two girls, and you’d like another still? Why gooddaughter, you are near as lusty as any wolf!”  
  
  
At that Catelyn blushed but then rebounded by asking, “Would you like to meet them?”  
  
  
Feeling that the modesty was falsely held for a woman who’d given birth to so many children, Lyarra dismissed it from her mind and said, “Aye, fetch your pack of wolf pups, and they can meet their new Uncle.”  
  
  
Catelyn nodded and departed the room. Gods, if she stayed here, in this year that would mean all of Ned’s children would be this one’s elders. And if Rickard wanted more children, which she was inclined to want herself seeing as her pups had been most cruelly taken from her, they’d all be far younger now. And when they were grown, Rickard would give their children land elsewhere in the North mayhaps.  
  
  
That led Lyarra into wondering—who is Lord of Winterfell now? Rickard or Ned?  
  
  
While contemplating that question a knock was heard, and Catelyn appeared  
  
  
“Gods, gooddaughter, did you have them waiting out in the corridor?” questioned Lyarra, shocked at how  
  
  
“Aye. As I said, I would not overwhelm you to begin with.”  
  
  
And so in entered the red pack as Lyarra thought of them. Robb and Sansa were completely in the mold of their mother—of that there was no doubt. Arya indeed was a she-wolf pup almost reminiscent of Branda. But Brandon and Rickon? They were most certainly more Flint than either Stark or Tully. It made the part of her that had loved to hear her mother tell tales of climbing the mountains in the far North, leap for joy. Brandon especially reminded her of her mother in small ways. The shape of his head, the tint of his hair in the light, but most of all the scratches on his hands—the sign of a true Flint who loved to climb. Rickon was her gruff Uncle Byran in miniature with the same dour pout and questioning eyes. Aye, she loved those two on sight. She gave each of her grandchildren a small hug (as much as she was able), but admittedly lingered longer on Brandon and Rickon than she did the others--attention which they seemed rather glad to receive.  
  
  
“Why isn’t Jon here? He’s as much her grandchild as the rest of us!” pouted Arya.  
  
  
“Jon? You didn’t mention a Jon,” stated Lyarra flatly.  
  
  
“Jon is our half-brother,” answered Robb immediately, not giving his mother the chance to speak.  
  
  
“Bastard half-brother,” added Sansa.  
  
  
“Bastard half-brother… you tolerate a _bastard_ here, under your own roof?!” exclaimed Lyarra. What kind of soft-hearted Southron fancy was this?  
  
  
“Children, leave,” stated Catelyn curtly.  
  
  
Lyarra held tightly onto Rickon, who had remained on the bed after his hug and was fascinated by his little uncle. “No, they stay.”  
  
  
After a short contest of stares, her gooddaughter finally admitted, “I would not speak unkindly about their half-brother in front of them.”  
  
  
The reaction from the children was palpable. Too palpable to pass over.  
  
  
“Look at them, Catelyn. As you see, they already know you do in private, so whether you do so in front of them or not is of little consequence. Out with it madam. What soft-hearted notion allowed you to tolerate a bastard under the same roof as your own children? It is a dishonor to them and yourself! Was it this so called “mother’s mercy” I hear the Manderlys speak of?” questioned Lyarra, incensed on her grandchildren’s behalf. Arya of them all stared at her with utter surprise.  
  
  
“Do you think if I had any choice in the matter that he would still be here?” growled Catelyn in obvious frustration. And then it clicked, Ned had forced her to accept the bastard. Gods, was he as foolish as that? Or did he hate his lady wife so? Or was it even worse than that? Did he care so little for his children? This was something that had to be corrected, immediately.  
  
  
Lyarra was quiet for a moment, before turning to Robb and asking, “Robb, could you be a good boy and fetch your father? It appears I have put off a conversation with my son for rather too long. One does not mistreat one’s lady wife and put one’s children in such foolish danger.”  
  
  
“Jon’s not a danger! He’s my brother!” protested Arya. Her sister tried to pull her back from the edge of the bed, only to have the she-wolf slip out of her grasp.  
  
  
Lyarra stared at the fervent look in her granddaughter’s face. She recognized that… Branda had always looked as cross when they’d quarreled. Lyarra turned to Catelyn then and said, “The bastard’s already at work dividing your children’s loyalties, I see… ‘tis worse than I thought.”  
  
  
Robb continued to stand there, imitating the fish his grandfather likely was. Lyarra spurred, “Well don’t just stand there boy, go and fetch your father!”  
  
  
“But he’s meeting with… the rest of them in the crypts… he said he wasn’t to be disturbed—” began Robb.  
  
  
“Disturb him! This is more important than whatever he’s doing in the bloody crypts!” shouted Lyarra, causing Rodrik to cry. Robb left as quick as a dog with his tail tucked between his legs. She adjusted herself and moved to sooth Rodrik. Rickon was ushered off the bed by Catelyn, and back into his mother’s arms to give her the room to maneuver as she needed.  
  
  
Lyarra then declared, “Now… while we wait, I want to hear more about this bastard.”


	5. BRANDON I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brandon grows jealous of Ned.

**BRANDON**

 

“Lyanna! Put your skull down!” snapped father. Ned had brought them down to the crypts to speak with them. The why was obvious, at least to Brandon, as the statues to himself, Lyanna, and father were rather blatant in what they said of how things stood in 298. But of course, Lya had to take things a step further than that, just like always.

 

“What? Didn’t you ever wonder what you looked like without your flesh, father?” challenged Lyanna boldly.

 

“It’s disrespectful,” countered father as he came, took her skull from her hands and put it back into the stone sepulcher that contained the rest of her bones and nothing else.

 

“I hardly think I can disrespect myself. In fact I know I can’t,” stated Lyanna boldly.

 

Brandon couldn’t help but snigger at that.

 

She then turned to him and urged, “Come on, Bran, let’s see what you look like!”

 

“Stop calling me Bran, Lya. You know I hate that name,” growled Brandon as he placed his body between Lyanna and his stone sepulcher that sat in the wall for him.

 

“Do you now? Why?” she questioned.

 

“‘Tis the name of a child, and I am no boy.”

 

“You complained about that all through the Tourney of Harrenhal, too,” said the otherwise silent Ned. He had simply allowed them full reign of this part of the crypt without any commentary, no doubt relying on the statues to say what he could not bring himself to say—that he was the top wolf now, the Alpha of the pack. Brandon knew how these things were done, Lord Dustin had instructed him as such, and cousin Benjen had as well.

 

“How was that Tourney, Ned? Did Ben go?” questioned Lyanna, completely forgetting about digging through the rest of their sepulchers. Well, Brandon had to give this to old Ned, he knew how to manage their sister.

 

Ned nodded and confirmed, “Aye, Ben went.”

 

“And I won the tourney, I imagine,” boasted Brandon with an assured smile.

 

“No, you lost on your first attempt against a newly knighted boy. You got so angry you said that tourneys were Southron fancies,” said Ned dryly. Brandon waited for a smirk to appear on old Ned’s lips but was disappointed when it didn’t come.

 

Lyanna meanwhile had burst out laughing, to which Brandon pursed his lips and snorted.

 

“You’re lying, I won, and you’re just too embarrassed by your poor performance to say I did,” countered Brandon, knowing it wasn’t true the moment he’d accused Ned of it, but that mattered little compared to his wounded pride for the nonce.

 

Ned approached Brandon then, and met him straight in the eye and said rather dourly, “I have only ever told one lie in my life brother, and that wasn’t it.”

 

“Boys, calm down,” said Father.

 

“I am a man, Father,” stated Brandon firmly, though his father looked at him not. Instead Father locked gazes with Ned, who to his merit did not back down from Father’s glare, which made Brandon even more jealous than he had been a moment ago.

 

“Only a boy need remind me of that,” Father retorted grimly.

 

Brandon was hurt by that implication and narrowed his eyes and scowled to show his displeasure. How was he not a man? He’d fucked as many women from here to Barrowton as could likely be fucked without calling it rape. Barbrey had said he was the finest _man_ she’d ever seen—a stallion among men was the term she’d used when his sword was bloody from her. He had learned to fight and joust—even if certain siblings of his lied about his clearly superior abilities. He was grown in about every possible way one could imagine. And if father just didn’t want to see it, well, he was an old man anyway, with far too much grey in his beard.

 

“This is a distraction from why I brought you all down here,” said Ned, breaking Brandon from his incessant thoughts.

 

“And why did you?” rounded Father immediately.

 

“It concerns Jon.”

 

“You mean your supposed bastard?” asked Lyanna as she closed her own sepulcher, seemingly disappointed there were no real surprises within it beyond her bones.

 

“He’s my son isn’t he?” Brandon asked, with a knowing look. Aye he’d fucked enough women to have a son, Brandon actually rather liked the idea of having a boy—even if he looked a lot like Ned.

 

“What makes you think that he isn’t my blood?” asked Ned.

 

“I think what Lyanna and Brandon are hinting at is that the idea of you having a bastard seems rather unlike you, Ned, and I must admit that I rather agree with them, though why you would pretend he were yours when he isn’t, I cannot fully explain either.”

 

Ned was very careful in how he answered, saying, “Believe what you will, it does not change that I have dishonored myself and wronged my lady wife and Jon all the same.”

 

There was something that Ned wasn’t saying, which was odd of him. Had the Eyrie taught Ned how to lie? Well he did admit to knowing how to lie now.

 

“You mean _my_ former betrothed?” Brandon asked to be sure he understood everything.

 

“Who is now my wife,” answered Ned firmly.

 

Brandon approached his older younger brother and gave him a punch to his face for Catelyn’s sake. It was the least he could do on Catelyn’s behalf, Brandon told himself, and had nothing to do with Ned or Father not recognizing how grown he was whatsoever.

 

“Brandon!” shouted father. Lyanna swooped in to Ned’s side, immediately asking if he were all right.

 

He had the decency to admit, “I deserved that.”

 

“And I have another for your boy’s sake all ready,” challenged Brandon. That would assure Ned knew his place once again, surely. He may be older now, but Brandon would always be the eldest. _Always_.

 

“Don’t you dare!” protested Lyanna, turning quickly to glare at Brandon. After a brief exchange of their eyes, Brandon relented by crossing his arms. He’d made his point after all.

 

“I don’t need your protection, Lya,” protested Ned, who was returned the favor in the form of a slap from Lyanna herself. Father said nothing as Ned took the abuse, which Brandon thought was interesting way of showing his approval, but not atypical.

 

“That was for your son’s sake. What were you thinking raising him here in Winterfell? That was cruel of you! To grow up knowing what kind of life he might have were he not born a bastard, but always to be reminded of it, every day. It was _very_ cruel of you, Ned. I didn’t think you could be so cold!”

 

“There was no other way,” said Ned, wincing as he spoke and avoiding Lya’s eyes.

 

“There are always other options,” countered Father, who had remained silent since Lyanna’s own outburst.

 

“Couldn’t his mother have raised him?” Brandon asked.

 

Ned looked away from them as he admitted, “His mother is dead.”

 

_Oh…_

 

“And her family?” questioned Father, clearly thinking Jon’s mother were some noble girl, which made sense why Ned would want to raise his son.

 

“Dead as well,” said Ned, with an emotional break in his voice. That had the unwanted effect of making Brandon wonder if Ned truly cared for Jon’s mother, whoever she was, and that was the reason he had raised Jon at Winterfell. Aye, that would make some amount of sense, but that would be a further wrong to Catelyn all the same. In any case he’d deserved the punch.

 

“Then you could have sent him off to some bannermen to raise for you,” Father rattled off.

 

Ned shifted uncomfortably. “Howland had offered… but I told him no.”

 

“Howland?” questioned Brandon, confused by who he meant.

 

“Lord Reed’s son?” asked Father knowingly.

 

Ned continued, “Old Lord Reed died not long after you went south, Father, and Howland then became Lord Reed. He offered to take Jon for me, to raise him up in the obscurity of the Neck. But I said no.”

 

“Why didn’t you?” Brandon asked.

 

Ned finally stopped looking away and met their eyes. And for the first time in a long while, Brandon thought he saw his brother on the verge of crying. “Because you were all gone. All of you had gone off and gotten yourselves killed by your own stupidities. Benjen was leaving for the Night’s Watch, Catelyn had yet to arrive, and the castle was empty of family except for Jon.”

 

Father was clearly struggling to understand as he said, “It makes sense that you’d have kept him then, but surely after your wife arrived and you began to have other children, keeping Jon would have been seen as senseless to you.”

 

“You’d have me raise him as my son here in Winterfell and then when I had other children abandon him to whatever fate the Gods had for him? Mayhaps raising him in Winterfell was cruel, Lya, but tell me if that would not have been the crueler?” demanded Ned of Lyanna. Lya for her part looked between Ned and Father with an inability to have a ready quip to answer—a rare scene indeed. But there was something that was bothering Brandon.

 

“What do you mean killed by our own stupidities?” questioned Brandon, crossing his arms as he asked.

 

“You were stupid enough to shout ‘come out and die’ about the Crown Prince while in the capital,” stated Ned bluntly.

 

“If I said that, there must have been a good reason for it, at the time,” justified Brandon automatically.

 

Ned answered, “Aye, you thought that the Crown Prince had taken Lya hostage.”

 

Lyanna laughed at at that, “Me? You think I’d let any man take me?”

 

The silence from the rest of the family upset Lyanna instantly, and she pouted automatically.

 

Father questioned, “But why would the Prince be accused of taking Lyanna? Was she taken from the tourney?”

 

Ned answered that, “Lya thought that he might offer her freedom.”

 

“Freedom from what?” asked Father, his brow narrowing.

 

Ned remained silent. Father eyed Lya who had suddenly gone pale under his gaze.

 

Brandon prodded, “You can’t just say something like that and not tell us, Ned.”

 

Ned looked to Lya and then she seemed to widen her eyes in understanding.

 

“But… I would have gone straight to Essos given the chance!” she exclaimed at long last.

 

“The Prince locked you up in a tower in the Red Mountains instead, I found you… just as you were dying,” said Ned softly to their sister as he moved to hug her.

 

Lya however took a few steps back from older Ned’s grasp and demanded, “How?”

 

Ned sighed, and rested his arms down at his side, “A fever, which wouldn’t have killed you had you had access to a maester...”

 

“But since I’d ran away and was locked up, I died instead…” finished Lya without allowing him to finish, with Ned only nodding after she’d deduced it all.

 

“You said all of us died stupidly. What then, in my opinion was my stupidity? In your mind.” asked Father pointedly.

 

Ned’s cheeks flushed slightly before he said, “Yours was the worst fate of all. After Brandon had been arrested for threatening the Prince’s life, he called you down to answer for his treason. You showed up dressed in your armor, declaring your right to a trial by combat, which the Mad King allowed you. Only he named his champion to be fire and he burned you alive while you were in your armor, saying that all you had to do to win was not be burnt. All the while, Brandon had been brought in and tied to a rope by his neck laying a sword on the ground just out of his reach, saying that if he were able to take the sword and cut the rope, he… you could try saving father. You choked to death first.”

 

Father’s face was unmoving, as still as his statue. Lya turned from them all and looked away. Brandon could hear her crying, though she’d likely deny it if anyone confronted her about it now.

 

Brandon took a deep breath in order to calm himself before bursting out, “Tell me that bastard is dead, Ned. Tell me that you ran your sword across his neck.”

 

“I didn’t have the chance. Ser Jaime, Tywin Lannister’s son did it before me. He was made a Kingsguard to Aerys, and the treacherous knight stabbed him in the back and slit his throat for good measure,” said Ned with an obvious distaste.

 

“Good, sounds like the bastard deserved all that and more,” added Brandon while Ned looked at him as though he’d just declared the High Septon a greenseer.

 

Father spoke rather calmly, considering everything he’d just heard. “I can understand, Ned, from all that you’ve said of our deaths, why you might have wanted then to have kept Jon, but what shall become of him when he is grown? Have you put any thought into that?”

 

“That is not for me to decide, but Jon. If he wishes to go to the Wall, then so be it. If he wants to be a sellsword, then so be it. If he wishes for a small keep somewhere and to be his brother’s bannerman, then so be it. I’ve decided enough of what his life has been up until this point, let him choose how to spend the rest of it.”

  
Lya at that point, her eyes red and cheeks slightly swollen then turned around and hugged Ned and whispered something in his ear to which only Ned answered, “Aye.” Lya then kissed Ned’s cheek where she’d slapped him earlier.

 

“I’d agree, it’s not your place to decide, little brother. Especially since Father and I’ve returned, it would seem you’re not Lord of Winterfell anymore.”

 

“Brandon!” scolded Father.

 

“The Old Gods must approve of such an action, if they brought us back—clearly they’re upset with how Ned’s been running the North. I mean, there’s a sept in Winterfell now—an actual sept.”

 

“Catelyn needed some place of the castle to call her own.”

 

“Was that how you bought her loyalty after introducing Jon to her then? Accept my bastard son and here’s a sept for you to pray in?” Brandon mocked.

 

He wasn’t completely surprised when old Ned took a punch at him, what he was surprised was how hard it hurt. However unlike every other time they’d gone to blows as boys, Ned simply stood there afterwards.

 

Brandon taunted him, “Well, go on then, Neddy, hit me again if you’re such a man to your lady wife.”

 

“Father!” called a voice from further down the crypt, and Brandon turned to see Ned’s eldest by Catelyn appearing out of the shadows.

 

“What is it Robb?” asked Ned, his entire demeanor changing in front of the boy. Robb could only look between Brandon and Ned for the first few seconds before saying, “Grandmother wants to speak to you… about Jon.”

 

“Now you’ve done it…” muttered Father.


	6. CATELYN I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catelyn talks further with her mother-in-law, and discovers something new about Rickon.

**CATELYN**

 

Ned’s mother had finished scarfing down her meal rather eagerly. Catelyn had sent the children out while she'd ate, which Lady Lyarra had protested most viscerally at being parted from Bran and Rickon, with Rickon choosing to remain with his grandmother and little uncle Rodrik on the bed rather than leave the room--stealing some of his grandmother's food with little complaints from his grandmother on the subject. Catelyn wondered at the attention Lyarra gave Rickon as she ate, and suddenly felt slightly embarrassed. Rickon was talking, not that he didn't talk ever, but he was energetically doing so as his grandmother chatted away with him. And they were talking about Shaggydog of all things. Catelyn had been busy as any Lady of Winterfell ought to be, managing a castle’s household staff was no easy task, planning meals, seeing to her daughters’ education, they all took up much of her time. She thought that she’d scheduled her time well enough to know her youngest son and his ways, but seeing him blossom under the attention of his grandmother, well, had opened up an entirely different side of Rickon and a different part of her heart pained at the accusation.

  

Rickon proudly declared, “He’s still just a pup, but he’s mine, and he’s big and black already.”

 

Lyarra declared, “Well, I think it’s just right that your father gave you all puppies from the most recent litter.”

 

“Shaggydog’s not a dog, he’s a wolf,” answered Rickon plainly.

 

“A wolf pup? Isn’t that a little dangerous?” asked Lyarra eyeing Catelyn, as though she were the cause of such danger.

 

“Robb and Jon found them in the woods,” explained Rickon.

 

“The bastard found them?” asked Lyarra warily.

 

“They were returning from seeing the execution of a Night’s Watch deserter when it happened. Robb and Jon apparently were racing when they came upon the pups nursing at their dead mother,” added Catelyn.

 

“How many pups were there?” asked Lyarra.

 

“Six, one for each of my children and another for the boy,” answered Catelyn, refraining from calling Jon the bastard. It wasn’t like she was defending her husband’s son. Not in the least, she just didn’t like the way that her goodmother brandished it about so commonly, repeatedly, and spitefully. Why she did so made Catelyn question herself. After all, Lyarra hadn’t been offended by the boy’s presence in Winterfell like she had, and she hadn’t had to bear the insult for years upon years. Besides, bandying about the term as she did would cause it to hold little meaning anymore.

 

Lyarra paled at that slightly, but nodded and then asked, “And how did the mother die? Was that determined?”

 

“A stag’s antler through the throat,” answered Catelyn. She then couldn’t stop herself the next moment before adding, “I should also mention that it’s a Baratheon who now sits on the Iron Throne.”

 

There, she’d finally said it. It had been bothering her ever since Ned had returned home with those pups. How he could not see that they were a sign from his gods, when she could see it as plain as day, Seven worshiping as she was, Catelyn knew not.

 

“Shaggy’s mad that his momma’s dead. He saw the stag and her fight,” said Rickon then, growing bored with his sleepy little Uncle. At this declaration, Lyarra's eyes went wide.

 

“And how did you come to know that, my little wolf pup?” asked Catelyn as she moved closer to the bed to scoop him up, but Rickon did not come to her waiting arms like he might have before. Instead he sat nestled next to his grandmother and looking rather… oddly at her.

 

Lyarra however looked at Rickon strangely before asking, “Tell me again Rickon, what color eyes does Shaggy have?” She then took Rickon’s chin and gave a closer look of Rickon’s own eyes. Rickon uncharacteristically let her do so without pulling his head away from her grasp as he often did when Old Nan or one of the other nursemaids tried to comb his hair.

 

“Green,” answered Rickon calmly. Lyarra once again paled at the answer before turning to Catelyn and asking, “Do you have a rider who can make it to Clan Flint?”

 

“House Slate is close by, we could send them a raven—“ began Catelyn, but she was hushed by Lyarra before she even had a chance to finish her thought.

 

She shook her head as she interrupted, “No, it must be a rider—the Flint won’t trust anyone from House Slate riding forth with a message.”

 

“I don’t recall House Slate and Clan Flint ever being on sour terms in all the histories of the North that I’ve studied,” commented Catelyn, and she had studied every one there had been from the day she’d learned she was to marry Brandon.

 

Lyarra sighed and said, “Clan Flint doesn’t trust your grey—maesters. Sending a raven would give the maesters every opportunity to read any message you send through them, and then they will report it to the Citadel.”

 

“You speak as though Maester Luwin weren’t to be trusted. He’s the entire reason you’re still alive, you know,” explained Catelyn.

 

“It is urgently important that I send word to Clan Flint!” insisted Lyarra, and then she added, "And the maesters mustn't know! They'll ruin everything!"

 

“About what?” questioned Catelyn, while ignoring the dig made against maesters, simply for Luwin's sake. “If it requires a rider, he’ll need a horse and provisions, and I’d like to know for what purpose you intend to use one of my husband’s men to ride out to meet with Clan Flint.”

 

Lyarra stared long and hard at Catelyn before shaking her head and falling back into her pillows, though she put her arm around Rickon rather protectively at that moment.

 

“No, goodmother, I would know what it is that has you so upset,” insisted Catelyn.

 

That unfortunately was when Arya chose the absolute wrong time to interrupt, dragging Jon in behind her. The boy had the good sense to appear abashed as he was drug into the room by Arya.

 

“See, he looks just like father!” insisted Arya rather pointedly.

 

“Arya! If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times, do knock before you enter a room whose door is closed!” scolded Catelyn mayhaps a little harshly.

 

Arya ignored her as she thrusted Jon forward for Lyarra to see before closing the door behind her and pressing herself against it—apparently to keep Jon from bolting out the door at the first opportunity, if Catelyn was any judge.

 

“Aye, that the bastard does,” stated Lyarra after a long held silence where she had stared at Jon for what seemed an eternity. Jon flinched at being called what he was, but did not back down from Lyarra in response. Rickon looked between everyone rather confused before sighing and settling in to once again not being the center of attention, it would seem.

 

Another long silence descended upon the room with Lyarra regarding Jon more before saying, “I regret the way you came into existence, but you are a grandson and there is nothing to be done about that, I suppose.”

 

Again Jon stood as still as his father would, his face almost a cold mask of ice.

 

“How well do you ride, bastard?” queried Lyarra.

 

“He has a name,” interrupted Arya.

 

“Arya,” warned Catelyn, but Lyarra waved her off.

 

Jon answered the question calmly, “I ride rather well.”

 

“Have you ever visited the mountain clans in the North?” asked Lyarra pointedly. It was then that Catelyn began to catch on to what Lyarra was aiming at, and she wondered if Ned would simply let it happen. After all, it was his mother making the arrangements.

 

Jon answered honestly. “With my father and Robb.”

 

“Then I have a task for you. A very important task, and an opportunity for you, if my uncle still lives that is.”

   
Jon's answer was simple, “He does, I met him… once.”

 

Lyarra’s smile broadened like a cat that had just caught a mouse. However yet again were they interrupted, this time by the door pushing against Arya.

 

“Mother? I brought father and uh… grandfather... can we come in?” asked Robb through a crack in the door.

 

“Arya, let your brother in,” ordered Catelyn, and Arya backed away from the door, still eyeing Lyarra as she did.

 

Robb entered the room followed closely by Ned and her goodfather. Rickard immediately sat on the edge of the bed next to his wife and moved to pick up Rodrik rather tenderly. Ned pulled Jon a few steps to the side to allow Rickard to pass and join his wife. Catelyn thought that his face might be a tad swollen and red for some reason. _He’s been fighting, but with who?_ Lyarra watched as Rickard picked up the sleeping Rodrik with a slight smile before turning her attention back to Jon. Robb came to Catelyn’s side upon entering, leaning down and whispering “Uncle Brandon’s sulking in the Godswood,” in her ear. He then grabbed Arya and pulled her over to playfully reprimand her about blocking doorways.

 

Brandon would have to be talked to, and Catelyn feared it would likely have to be her that would have to do so. She wasn’t looking forward to the task, after all, he looked almost as he had the day he’d rode off from Riverrun, confident he would bring his sister back for their wedding. Mayhaps a little more clean-shaved, but otherwise, he still had as handsome a face as he’d ever had. Some small part of her leapt at that thought, and then wondered how well she looked after five children and fifteen years of marriage. She shook her head, she was being a fool. Brandon had never really loved her, not like Ned did. If Brandon had, he would’ve married her first and then rode off to find Lyanna.

 

“Arya dragged you in here?” asked Ned quietly to Jon.

 

The careful mask that Jon had worn melted in the instant he was face to face with Ned as he searched for words to answer him, “Aye… but I… I wanted to come, truly.”

 

Seeing Ned, Rickard, Lyarra, Arya, and Jon altogether like they were made her heart jump into her throat in that instant. She looked up at Robb, the heir to the castle and marveled at how much he resembled a younger Edmure and took his hand and held it tightly. He would inherit the castle, aye. Her other children wouldn’t have any worry in the future from Jon. No. It wouldn’t happen.

 

“Mother, you’re squeezing my hand too tight,” complained Robb in that moment.

 

“Sorry,” apologized Catelyn as she let go to allow him to shake out his hand… it was getting rather large compared to the rest of his body. He’d likely soon have a growth spurt by his next nameday.

 

“I’m glad you’re here Ned. I was just about to send Jon off to see my uncle, Orell.”

 

“And why would he need to see him?” questioned Ned.

 

Lyarra was silent for an instant before asking, “Catelyn tells me that your sons discovered a dead wolf bitch and brought home its pups as pets for your children?”

 

“Direwolf,” corrected Robb, before blushing a deep shade of red as all eyes turned to him. He then continued “The dead wolf was a direwolf.”

 

“And her pups are direwolves,” added Jon. Had that been Bran, Catelyn might have taken solace in how he immediately came to the aid of his brother. Still it seemed rather notable that Jon did so, enough to earn him a begrudging respect from her. Had he always done that? Catelyn wanted to say that he did, but she honestly could not say so with any certainty.

 

“What does Jon leaving Winterfell have anything to do with the direwolves?” questioned Ned.

 

“Tell me, what was your first thought when you saw our house sigil dead with a stag’s antler through its throat?” queried Lyarra. Rickon was beginning to look around wide-eyed, clearly confused and bewildered by what was going on, but Lyarra continued to hold onto him rather possessively.

 

“If you’re about to give me a lecture about signs and portents from the Old Gods, don’t even start,” began Ned.

 

“Son, if you were given a sign from the Old Gods, you need take heed of them. If you aren’t, mayhaps that is why we’ve returned,” countered Rickard, who had quietly been sitting back and focusing on Rodrik until that moment.

 

“It was just a dead wolf, who died like hundreds of other wolves die every day. Just because one wolf dies, should I therefore hold up in my castle and hide until one of Old Nan’s stories come to life?” questioned Ned incredulously.

 

“But it had enough pups for all of your children,” chimed in Jon, for once sharing the same thought Catelyn had had in that instant.

 

Ned nearly scoffed as he shook his head and said, “Coincidence.”

 

“This must surely be the reason why we’ve returned, then. We’re the second call from the Old Gods to get you to pay attention,” declared Rickard.

 

“If that’s so, then it’s even more important that Jon go and seek out Orell,” declared Lyarra. Arya who had been watching the interaction rather still, at this point fidgeted.

 

Ned put his hand on Jon’s shoulder and directed him towards the door, “Jon isn’t going anywhere unless I say so. He’s my son, and he goes or stays where I say.” Ned then turned around himself as if he wanted to make a quick exit of the room.

 

“Tell me, Ned, do you still believe in the Old Gods? Or do you just mindlessly follow the old traditions?” questioned Lyarra.

 

Ned didn’t answer her as he left taking a confused Jon with him.

 

When Ned had left, Rickard turned to his wife and declared, “The truth, Arra.”

 

“What?” was her reply.

 

Catelyn knew that her goodmother would say nothing in front of the children and so she ordered, “Robb, Arya, leave.”

 

“Why does Rickon get to stay?” questioned Arya automatically.

 

“What she has to say concerns Rickon, isn’t that right?” challenged Catelyn. I mean, that part was obvious.

 

“Aye, it does,” answered Lyarra tentatively, eyeing her suspiciously.

 

“Then I want to hear what it is. He’s my little brother!” insisted Arya.

 

“Arya, mother said to go,” declared Robb directly.

 

“But—” began Arya as Robb took her by surprise by picking her up and taking her to the door.

 

“You’ll find out later, I’m sure,” said Robb with a wink. And suddenly Arya stopped fighting Robb so hard to stay. In fact when they reached the door, Arya gave Robb a wink back and hurried out the door. Robb then closed the door and turned around.

 

“You shouldn’t—” started Lyarra.

 

“Not going to happen,” interrupted Robb, who then caught Rickon’s eye. The toddler, happy for the attention pulled himself free from his grandmother and hurried across the bed and into Robb’s grasp.

 

“You were saying something about my little brother?” questioned Robb rather fiercely. In no moment was Catelyn more proud of her son than in this one.

 

Lyarra looked to Rickard, but he only returned her gaze with a look of his own which caused Lyarra to sigh and admit defeat.

 

She at long last admitted, “He’s a skin changer, like my uncle.”

 

Catelyn felt the room grow cold upon hearing those two words uttered together, followed quickly by a nausea that nearly caused her to lose what lunch she had eaten. Robb for his part, widen his eyes in shock, a similar reaction to what Rickard gave, for an instant connecting the two of them in a way Catelyn might not have noticed otherwise.

 

“A... skin changer?” asked Catelyn, wanting to be sure she had heard her goodmother correctly.

 

“While you Andals may have killed most of them south of the Neck, here in the true North there are still those who are born with the gift from time to time. Rickon’s rather young to be starting this early, but being with that direwolf pup of his must have triggered his gift,” declared Lyarra.

 

“Are you sure? Have you seen him and the pup together?” questioned Rickard.

 

“It’s the direwolves then… they did this to my son? They… made him a monster?” questioned Catelyn, feeling her emotions get the best of her as she recalled Septas telling her horror stories from the days of the Andal conquest when First Men would inhabit the skins of beasts and viciously tear the faithful to shreds all about, their bodies inhabited by demons while their minds inhabited beasts.

 

“Skin Changers are born, not made,” corrected Lyarra who then added, “And it’s important that he seeks training from another skin changer, soon, in how to handle his gift. If not, then… he could go completely feral given how young he is.”

 

 “No. I’m telling Farlen to take the wolves out to the Wolf's Wood and the matter will be solved,” declared Catelyn, rising and walking over to take Rickon from Robb.

 

“You’d take Grey Wind away too?” questioned Robb with an expression of shock upon his face.

  

“To protect one of you, I’d do anything,” reaffirmed Catelyn as she took Rickon forcibly from his grasp.

 

“No! Shaggy hasn’t done anything!” protested Rickon as he squirmed and kicked as she took him into her grasp.

 

“Breaking the bond now would only make things worse,” Lyarra tried to argue, but Catelyn had already stopped paying attention as Rickon had caused her to lose her balance and fall back into the Wall, causing her grip on Rickon to loosen and her son to quickly slip past Robb and open the door and rush out.


	7. SANSA I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa tries to make sense of everything in the godswood.

SANSA

The castle had been in a commotion since she had awoke. At first a man she was to call grandfather had appeared, then her Uncle and Aunt, followed by at long last by a grandmother who was delivered of a new infant uncle. To say Winterfell was calm was to outright lie. Sansa needed to escape from all the commotion and drama of the new arrivals. She had first thought of her mother’s Sept with its incense and her mother’s chanted prayers, and yet the thought of praying to the Seven to help address what was unmistakenably the acts of other gods, unless of course, two more dead relations were to appear before the end of the day, felt out of place to Sansa. She could of course treat with her father’s gods in the Godswood. And it was in the Godswood that she’d be with Lady, along with her packmates. Aye, facing the weirwood with Lady by her side seemed exactly the thing to do, for this return of Starks seemed just as much a thing of their doing as the gift of Lady. They would whisper on how to proceed forward. Was father still Lord of Winterfell now that the old gods had returned grandfather? Was mother still the Lady of Winterfell with grandmother returned? Did the old gods somehow find displeasure with them all? These thoughts and questions could not be answered in a Sept, and Lady, aye, Lady would at least reassure her that the old gods had not forsaken them as Starks.

The old iron gate groaned open and closed at her entrance into the ancient godswood. Sansa had hardly walked far down the well-worn path leading to the heart tree when Lady cam padding up next to her as if anticipating her arrival. She ran her fingers through Lady’s fur, anticipating feeling some burs having caught themselves in her coat. She would have to brush Lady later that night to remove them. It would be a good thing to do something normal after a day of such tumult as this.

They arrived at the heart tree rather quickly from Sansa’s memory, as though the white tree had been drawing them closer all the while. Sansa found a rock to sit upon that faced the carved face of the tree a good few feet from its base. Lady sat beside her, her tongue out, panting in the warmth of late summer.

What prayers were she to offer to the old gods? It always seemed father had muttered his in a whisper while mother chanted hers aloud. She had learned her mother’s prayers, but father’s… well, father’s never seemed learned by rote, instead sounding as though he were only speaking to the old gods like one might one’s lord—dutifully and reverently. But what remarked Sansa the most about the surrounding godswood was how quiet and peaceful it was, especially compared to the rest of the castle this day. Mayhaps that was how the old gods preferred it? Hence why father whispered. So Sansa took a deep breath, closed her eyes and thought on the quiet of the world around her and the heart tree, and the darkness she now saw with her eyes closed. Slowly she began to feel as though she were drifting away from sitting upon the rock, as though she were floating on a dark sea which gently rocked her like her mother had when she was younger. And upon that sea she heard whispers barely audible and completely incomprehensible—except for her name which cut clear through to her like a knife might.

“San…. Sa…. San…sa…Sansa…”

Upon hearing her name she opened her eyes and turned about her wondering if she might have heard Bran calling her name from elsewhere in the godswood. But she was alone, with only Lady nestled in the tree’s roots, her muzzle tucked between her paws, though looking at her with the worried look only a lupine is capable of for a member of her pack.

“Bran?” Sansa called out to the godswood about her, but she received no answer. The sunlight which had poked through the canopy of the trees in places now looked more gold than yellow, indicating that Sansa had been about the tree for several hours, even though it had only have been a few moments, mayhaps a minute or so, she felt. Her eyes must be playing tricks on her, mayhaps she might not have noticed the lateness of the hour before, aye, that made the most sense. And her brother was looking for her, it was time to leave the godswood, though she thought these things, Sansa still felt compelled to remain seated where she was—but this was most likely from her bottom having gone sore from sitting too long upon the rock. Once she moved she’d feel perfectly fine—and yet she didn’t.

It was then that Sansa heard footfalls fast approaching her and whatever compulsion had bound her to remain still was released as Rickon came running into this corner of the godswood calling for Shaggydog and sounding on the verge of tears. Lady raised her head and Sansa stood, her legs feeling rather weak and twig-like beneath her, and yet she did not fall as she intercepted her youngest brother before he came tumbling into the presence of the weirwood.

“Rickon, what on the gods’ green earth are you doing?” demanded Sansa

“Shaggy won’t go! Mama can’t make him go! Shaggydog!” cried her frantic little brother, whose mind had not heard her at all.

“Mother would hardly send Shaggy away,” Sansa tried to soothe her little broher.

“Then why can’t I find him?” whined her little brother.

“Mayhaps you’ve scared him into hiding with all your yelling and running about,” said Sansa as she took a better look of her brother’s disheveled appearance. His clothes were completely sweated through and dirtied up as though he’d crawled through every nook and cranny of the godswood searching for Shaggydog.

“If you just sit down beside Lady here, I am sure Shaggy will come,” urged Sansa as she led her brother to her wolf, who in that instant looked at the dirty Rickon as though he might be yet another pup for her to curl up against as she allowed Sansa to set her little brother beside her. Even with him nearly out of breath, the direwolf seemed content to have him by her side. No sooner had she done so than did Sansa hear a wolf’s howl from elsewhere In the godswood. Rickon was immediately upon his feet once again, calling his direwolf’s ridiculous name, and running off before Sansa could catch him. Without missing much of a beat, Sansa lifted her skirts and hurried after him. His lack of height soon proved the benefit as he scurried beneath trees and bushes which seemed to crowd about Sansa and catch at her dress, as though they were grabbing at her, holding her back with their long finger-like branches, one particularly green one even whipped across her face harshly, leaving a stinging feeling across it which caused Sansa to pause and touch her hand to her cheek and find the tiniest amount of blood upon her fingers. 

It was then that Sansa looked about her to find she was far from the weirwood, behind the brush of the path which lead to the glass gardens with Lady right at her heels, looking no worse for wear from the run among the underbrush, unlike Sansa who was sure her dress must have torn somewhere along the way. It was then that Sansa heard voices coming from the glass garden and Sansa recognized her own mother’s voice and that of another man.

“It might be how things are, Catelyn, but that doesn’t mean my brother had the right to mistreat you as such, especially in my stead.”

Sansa turned and peered through the bush she was hiding behind to see her newfound Uncle Brandon holding the door to the glass garden open as they exited it for the godswood proper.

“He hardly knew me, and besides a man at war has needs… even my mother understood that.”

“And what would your mother have done if your father had brought home his welps for all of the Riverlands to see?”

“It is none of your concern, Brandon.”

“We were betrothed once,” said her uncle who drew her mother close to him and lifted her chin to meet his eyes.

Mother was silent a moment before pulling back from his grasp with the aid of a push from her hands against his chest. She said, “And then you rode off and died. Where was your concern then for my honor?”

“I did not do that.”

“Mayhaps not yet in your life, but the Brandon I knew did, and you hardly seem that much different from him. Just as headstrong, willful, and cocksure as you always were.”

“And you a cold fish from my brother’s frozen prick.”

At that mother slapped Brandon in the face, causing Sansa to have to silently gasp as she drew more breath in that moment.

“You are not to speak of me or my husband in such a manner, brother or no. He is the Lord of Winterfell and I his lady wife.”

Uncle Brandon looked as though he were want to hit mother, grabbing the hand which she’d used to slap him, holding it tightly as though he meant to wrench her to her knees, but instead he simply glared at her, and she returned the look despite her uncle’s white knuckled grip. And suddenly like a passing storm, her uncle’s face seemed to clear with what could only be described as a smug, self-assured look, though he kept ahold of mother’s arm all the same.

“For now, but I am my father’s heir, and I wonder who is the Lord of Winterfell with him still alive? Mayhaps I will ride off to ask the King that myself.”

If mother was worried in that instant, Sansa had little time to tell for a voice shouted, “Let go of my Mama!”

Bursting from the other side of the path came Shaggydog charging at their uncle with a rage Sansa had hardly seen from the pups. Racing after the black direwolf was her youngest brother, who forced himself in front of their mother as Shaggy knocked their uncle to the ground, biting the arm which had grabbed ahold of mother, causing her uncle to scream.

“Get him Shaggy!” yelled Rickon.

Mother was all shock as she recovered from the whiplash of nearly being pulled to the ground as her arm was freed from her uncle’s grasp, and the sight of seeing Shaggydog bite down hard upon Uncle Brandon’s arm and begin to twist. If the direwolf wasn’t careful—he was like to pull the arm right off, and Shaggy Sansa knew was anything but careful.

Before Sansa could say anything, only thinking that Shaggy needed to back off given the horrified look on mother’s face, Lady bounded out of the underbrush and landed right at her uncle’s head, staring Shaggydog down and a low growl heard from her. Shaggydog in response took note of his packmate and seemed reluctant to let go, but Lady had to only bear her own teeth and bark once in warning at her packmate before Shaggy reluctantly let go of her screaming uncle, though he did not immediately jump off of him.

“Don’t you hurt Mama again,” growled her little brother after a long pause for her uncle to calm down and look fearfully at the black direwolf pup with his blood dripping from its mouth. The next moment, Shaggydog was off of their uncle and sat protectively at mother’s feet, Lady joining her packmate staring her Uncle down, and like a scared pup, her Uncle got up and scurried away. 

He was hardly gone before Rickon looked up at their mother and said, “Shaggy only did what I told him to, Mama, don’t take Shaggy away! I told him to bite the bad man who was hurting you!”

Mother was for once, silent, opening and closing her mouth as though unable to find the appropriate words to say, sensing that if she delayed a moment longer, Sansa took a step out from the underbrush herself and gathered up Rickon.

“Mother wouldn’t ever think of getting rid of Shaggydog, Lady or any of the others,” said Sansa, more to soothe her youngest brother’s fears than knowing any truth, especially with how her mother looked at 

“Sansa! You’re bleeding,” was all her mother could gather herself to say as she fought to keep her squirming little brother in her arms.

“I scratched myself running after Rickon,” said Sansa with a weak smile.

“To the Great Keep with you both!” ordered their mother, and Sansa nodded and carried her little brother away. As she walked away, she took a look back at Lady and Shaggydog, one who sat obediently as she departed, and the other who followed after mother and them to the gate despite mother’s glares at the direwolf pup.


	8. JON I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon and Lyanna bond on their way to visit their Flint relation.

**JON**

 

In a lot of ways, Jon found the presence of his aunt to remind him a lot of Arya. She had the same manner of talking endlessly about anything, and the same desire to run off without a moment’s notice. Seeing his Aunt Lyanna behave as such suddenly made Jon understand why father always looked oddly at Jon and Arya when they played together—he must have been seeing himself and Lyanna once again—and why he was so silent when asked why he looked so sad when Jon was younger and more apt to ask questions.

 

“I’ll race you to that rock, ready,” and just like with Arya or Robb, before she had even shouted “go!” she was off, with Jon not far behind her. Just like with Arya, Jon knew it better to simply indulge his aunt her whim rather than fight her on it. His aunt was a true horsewoman, riding as though she were one in the saddle with the beast. In truth he had never imagined his aunt to be such… a child. He’d always imagined her to have been a bit more like his father, quiet, somber, and sad based upon the statue that father had built of her.

 

 “I won!” she said not a moment after as she had reached the rocky outcropping that had been chosen for the ride.

 

“Aye, and did you expect some sort of boon for doing so?” asked Jon like he might Arya, waiting for Ghost to catch his breath before continuing.

 

“Oh yes! I would like to have a _boon_ ,” said his aunt.

 

“And what boon should you like? I should warn you, I don’t have much on me at the moment.”

 

“Well, I get to ask you any question for the rest of the ride and you have to answer me, is that within your power to give?”

 

It was a silly prize, but just the sort of thing Arya would ask before running off to find small animals to put in her pockets.

 

“Well, ask away my lady aunt, ask away.”

 

His aunt made a mummer’s farce of deliberating for a long while before asking, “First, what is your favorite color?”

 

“Green—like the evergreens in the Wolfswood.”

 

“Such a dark color, I much prefer blue like the sky on a good summer’s day—not today obviously with how milky white it looks with all these ruddy clouds. What is your favorite food?”

 

“Honeyed oats.”

 

“I hope you add currants or nuts at least.”

 

Jon shook his head. “Just the honey.”

 

“Well, at least you don’t eat them without anything like Ned does.”

 

“Mayhaps it’s my mother’s influence… whoever she is.”

 

His aunt was silent for a moment.

 

“You don’t know who your mother is?” she asked, though seemed to Jon not to be asking at the same time.

 

Jon shook his head and sighed, knowing it’d be better to answer these questions now, with his Arya-like Aunt far from able to hound his father and upset Lady Stark further by pestering them after giving his answer, “No, my father never talks about her.”

 

“Did you ever ask?”

 

“When I was little, aye. He would always say the same things… she was a good woman was the bulk of what he’d say.”

 

His aunt grew silent for a moment before continuing her round of questions, “Aye, well, what do you like to do with your time? Do you like to ride?”

 

“Not as much as I like to train in the practice yard.”

 

With a slight grin, she asked, “Eager to prove to your capabilities to your father?”

 

Jon surprised himself by returning the smile saying, “Aye,” before he’d had a chance to even consider everything the question could imply.

 

“Ha! You may look like and perhaps even act mostly like Ned, but there’s a tiny bit of wolf’s blood in you! I did the same to your grandfather. Eventually I convinced him to let me ride the rings because I’d accomplished everything else a horsewoman could achieve and I wanted more of a challenge. Brandon and Ned were off at their fosterings, and Benjen was just a pup…sometimes I think I got the education a son of his would have had, had he raised Brandon or Ned by himself.” She paused for a moment before continuing by asking, “What do you want to do? Mayhaps I could get a good word in with Ned. He could never refuse me anything.”

 

Jon recognized that same crafty look from his sister, and knew that she likely could get his father to do as she pleased like Arya could with him, so Jon attempted some restraint for his father’s benefit. “I don’t want anything so much.”

 

Lyanna gave him a look which told him she didn’t believe him in the slightest. Jon oddly found the look reminiscent to one that Robb would give him every time he tried to deny something was bothering him about what Lady Stark might or might not have said that had caused Jon to tear a practice yard dummy to pieces in frustration.

 

“There has to be something you want from putting in all that time in the practice yard.”

 

Jon was more guarded with himself this time, he could sense that his aunt was after something—for whatever design of her own. He recognized it as the same tactic that he’d occasionally used to get Arya to admit things that Sansa, Jeyne, or Beth had said that she’d otherwise be reluctant to say for whatever reason. Jon knew what he wanted… he saw it every time Lady Stark looked on at Robb in the practice yard—just the way she’d beam at him, brimming over with pride in whatever accomplishment he'd made. His father, while not completely distant, was far sparser with his show of feelings. He would always compliment them both on what they’d learned, never just Jon alone and never just Robb alone. It was done with such precision, Jon knew his father had given the matter careful consideration, but for once he’d like to earn his father’s praises like Lady Stark bestowed them so freely upon Robb alone. However admitting that to his aunt would be like saying his father wasn’t a good father, when Jon knew he was. Well, far better than most fathers were to their natural children. So, after giving his answer a bit of thought, Jon committed to answering, “Well… I’ve yet to practice with live steel… but I know that’ll come with time. Robb’s not even practiced with live steel yet either.”

 

They fell into a short silence and somehow Jon knew she’d seen right through his remark, but was too doting an Aunt to say as much to his face.

 

“Is there someone you’re trying to impress? Mayhaps a little lady?” asked his aunt, seeming to try and lighten the conversation.

 

“Why would a lady be interested in whether I can fight well?” he asked, confused entirely by the question.

 

“All right, how about what you want to do once you are grown. Ned tells me you’ll be fifteen at your next nameday, and soon after that you’ll be a man grown. Have you thought of what you want to do?”

 

“Join the Night’s Watch,” Jon answered simply and without a second thought.

 

“The Night’s Watch?!” she exclaimed, her face betraying her utter shock and confusion in an instant.

 

“Aye, like Uncle Benjen, where… where it won’t matter whose son I am.”

 

“Is being Ned’s son so horrible?” she asked in that blunt manner that Arya often would.

 

“No. I mean, it’s just… where it won’t matter as much that I’m the Bastard of Winterfell.”

 

“No matter where you go Jon, you shall always be the Bastard of Winterfell. Joining the Night’s Watch won’t change that. North or South, bastards have a hard lot in life.”

 

Jon however refused to take her provocations. He was sure that if he joined the Night’s Watch, whatever he’d been before wouldn’t matter, and that’s what he wanted, to have his past not matter in the least.

 

His Aunt took his silence as a signal to move on to another subject, an quit pressing him. “So Benjen is at the Wall. I have wondered what had become of him. Have you seen much of him?”

 

“He comes down to Winterfell whenever Lord Commander Mormont has something he needs to report to my father that’s more important than a raven can carry. He’s First Ranger now, mayhaps I could join him as one… if I’m good enough.”

 

“You want to be away from Winterfell, then. To see the world beyond its castle walls.”

 

“Not just that, I—I want to do something meaningful with my life, for it to have some purpose, to prove…” Jon stopped himself, knowing that to say much more would be admitting too much, though just like with Arya or Robb, there was something about his Aunt which made him unwilling to deny her, no matter how hard he tried to do so.

 

“To prove that you’re not some kind of mistake?” she finished after having given him a few moments to finish his thoughts.

 

Despite himself, Jon agreed. “Aye.”

 

His aunt put her hand on his arm, and Jon was able to forget that they were almost the same age in that moment as she said, “I’m sorry you ever felt that way in Winterfell, it can be a restrictive place, especially under the care of its new mistress, but it is also home, your home as much as any other with Stark blood.”

 

“You don’t need to apologize, you had nothing to do with it. You were dead before I was born. It’s… It’s just it’s also all I’ve ever known…”

 

“And you want to know more.”

 

Jon did not answer her, for there was no need to answer a question like that.

 

“Old Flint did say to stay on the path this far, right?” asked his aunt after taking note of their surroundings.

 

“Aye, he said the old hut would be hard to miss on the outcropping.”

 

His aunt squinted and looked a bit further in the distance over the next hill and most likely on the other side of the valley which it hid, Jon could see that the path wound up in a switchback pattern to a broad ledge upon which a stone hut that was partly covered in moss with a thatch roof stood. With their destination in sight, Jon and his aunt spurred their horses up and over the hill and down into the valley the path took, winding next to the small creek that ran through these parts. They arrived as sunset was beginning to give way to the night to find that the hut’s windows were shuttered and door as though it were locked by more than just a key. His aunt was the one to knock on the door, but no reply came from within. It was then that Jon heard an owl hoot from up a tree, followed by the cry of a wolf far off in the distance, deeper in the forest. The horses were tied to a tree with a healthy amount of growth underneath that satisfied them. Ghost looked to the forest, as though contemplating a run into the woods towards the little cousin that had howled not so long ago.

 

“All this trouble to get to him, and he’s out,” grumbled his aunt after they had taken care of their saddles to rest the horses.

 

“We wait then, until he returns. He can’t have gone off very far, not at his age,” said Jon.

 

“Agreed, I can’t very well go far, but I’d thank ye to not talk about me as though I were one foot in the grave already. I’ve lived a rather long life as it is and I don’t intend to go quietly.”

 

Both Jon and his aunt jumped at the voice which came from the window right above them, and Jon saw the elderly Flint relative, Orell, his grandmother had sent them to fetch. He seemed far worse for wear than he had last been when Jon had visited many namedays prior with his father. His hair was thin, long, and white, the majority of it crudely tied back behind his head, with a few loose tendrils having escaped and hanging before his face. He looked straight at them with grey eyes that looked clouded, even from the distance they were. There was something to the shape of the man’s face which looked completely familiar to Jon, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on how—at least not until Jon took a second look at the scowl stretched upon the man’s face and recognized the same from his youngest brother’s pouty moods. Seeing that Jon could not help himself but smile. The owl which had hooted earlier now landed in a tree nearby, peering down at them both as though to examine them closely.

 

“State your purpose for why that greenboy of a great nephew of mine sent you two to me.” His aunt laughed to hear the greybearded Old Flint referred to as a greenboy.

 

When his aunt had recovered from her fit, she said, “It should be enough to know that the Flint sent us, at least until you offer us bread and salt.”

 

“Don’t you recognize me?” asked Jon, hoping that Orell could recognize him as one of the boys who’d visited him namedays ago. The Owl arched his neck down almost simultaneously as Old Orell did.

 

Orell then snorted, “You look like a Stark, and she a Flint in Stark skins. So Ned’s pups have grown these last namedays then? Children never knew when enough growing was good enough for them. Hold on,”

 

His aunt met his eyes in that moment, a grin stretched from ear to ear that Jon had seen his Uncle Benjen give from time to time. She said nothing, though she didn’t have to say anything for Jon to recognize she already knew she was going to enjoy getting to know their irascible, stubborn old relative.

 

After a few crashes and bangs had been heard from within, the door was unlocked and opened, but not held open as the old man muttered as he pointed in the direction a bowl of leftover bread and some salt that he’d laid out on a roughhewn board stretched across what looked like two carpenter’s horses with only a single bench for sitting. Orell hobbled back over his dirt floor towards a fireplace and began to fumble to light it. Jon immediately took a bit of bread and a pinch of salt and set to work trying to assist his aged relation, who’d have none of his help, saying that he wasn’t so old that he couldn’t light his own fire for his guests, and his aunt pulled Jon back as they took a seat on the blanket that had been laid out near the fire for them to sit at. Soon the fire had caught, illuminating the dark room. In this light, Jon could see that the short and thin old man that was his Flint relative had grown even more gaunt since last Jon had seen him, almost having the appearance of a skeleton about him.

 

“Is this better for your southron tastes? What has brought my sister’s kin to me? And be to the point, it’s getting late and I expect you’re as tired as I am,” he said when he’d taken a seat at his old bench, which groaned as he sat upon it.

 

“It is about my youngest brother, Rickon. He has begun to show signs… that is, we suspect he has inherited your gift.”

 

The old Flint was quiet for a moment before asking a question he couldn’t be serious in asking, “And which _gift_ would that be? My skill with a knife? How I can climb up the side of a cliff without a rope?”

 

“You know bloody well what we mean,” snapped Aunt Lyanna.

 

“He talks about memories his direwolf only knows, like he was there with the pup when it happened,” said Jon.

 

“The gift that shall not be named? That southrons and fools call sorcery? I fail to see how your brother could have inherited it from me. Any children I had wouldn’t have married outside the clan.”

 

“Are you always this obtuse?” growled Aunt Lyanna.

 

“I don’t know what obtuse means, but I assume it has something to with what a southron maester teaches,” returned the old man, unflapped by the remark.

 

Jon felt that if he wanted to be kept from being kicked out of his relation’s cottage—meager though it was, interjected saying “Regardless of how my brother received his ability, you are the closest blood to us who knows how it should be handled.”

 

“Am I now? And what makes you think that I am the closest when everything says elsewise? Has your father ever shown signs of the gift?” asked old Orell with a crooked smirk.

 

“I fail to see how that is important,” replied Jon

  
“It is, now answer the question lad.”

 

“None, that I know of.”

 

“Then I doubt he’s inherited this gift through my sister—she had the potential for passing on the gift that I will not deny, as did her daughter, and her daughter after her. That’s one thing we Flints know about the gift—more than anything else—the women can possess it, but less often than men--more often they simply give it to their children. The men get the gift more, but often they can’t pass it on to their children—and very rarely do they have more than one when they do. No, if a bairn were to inherit it from a father, then the mother must equally possess the gift in her blood as well to have more than one appear in a generation’s time. Who did your father end up marrying again?”

 

“Lady Catelyn Tully” answered Jon, though something bothered him about Orell’s comments. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly what.

 

“A southron… and an Andal one at that. Who was her mother, a Blackwood mayhaps?”

 

Jon didn’t know, but to his surprise, his Aunt chimed in at that moment, saying, “Whent, her mother was a Whent—Brandon had to memorize House Tully’s family tree before riding south to meet his betrothed, and I helped him.”

 

If Orell found his aunt's comments odd, considering she had yet to be introduced properly, he made no remark of it.

 

“A Whent… they’re the ones who replaced House Lothston at Harrenhal weren’t they? As I recall, a knight married the last Lothston girl and well, House Lothston became House Whent. And that… well, that would explain things rather nicely.”

 

“Why do you say that?” asked Jon, confused.

 

“Haven’t you ever heard the tales of Mad Danelle Lothston? We men of the mountains may like to keep to ourselves, but from time to time we prick up our ears when we hear tale of another skin changer or warg—especially one among the Southrons. It was rumored her animal was a great big bat that she could ride the back of—I doubt that was the case in reality, likely an ordinary little thing most like, but the point remains.”

 

“Well, won’t Lady Stark be in for a rude awakening,” preened his Aunt.

 

Jon still failed to see how it mattered just exactly where Rickon received his ability from, but something else his great-great Uncle had said bothered him. It bothered him tremendously enough to ask, “You said that very rarely when men have the gift do they pass it on to more than one when they do—why did you say that?”

 

Orell shifted about on the bench, saying, “I’d think that be obvious boy, what with your white shadow just outside the door.”

 

Jon responded without thinking, “I’m not… that is… I can’t.” And yet as he said it, something seemed to click for him. It explained some rather odd dreams he’d been having, especially since journeying North into the mountains to find his great-great Uncle Orell, that of running through the woods, hunting game, feasting on the flesh of his kills—even now he could taste the blood in his mouth. It made sense in a way that Jon could not keep denying to himself.  


Orell rolled his eyes and said, “Spare me the denials, wargs can sense one another m’boy,” His great-great uncle then place his thin bony hand on Jon’s shoulder and continued, “Call it a pack instinct, and right now my wolf can smell you in your wolf and he in you. It’s weak yet, barely there to tell the truth, but it won’t always be.”

 

Jon was stunned silent, his Aunt along with him.

 

“And considering who your mother isn’t, we know what pathetic strain of my sister’s your father inherited didn’t solely pass on to you. Now, boy, do you know who your mother was?”

 

His Aunt chose that moment to rise as though she were about to say something, but was interrupted by the sound of a wolf’s howl.

 

“Doesn’t your pup howl?” asked Orell after waiting a moment in silence.

 

Jon shook his head, knowing that yet unsure of how he knew it beyond never hearing Ghost howl with his pack.

 

“Well, you have your answer of where your brother’s gift came from, now it’s up to his mother’s folk to teach him. We Flints learned long ago to try and teach beyond our clan was a fool’s errand.”

 

Jon was about to protest when his aunt did so in his stead.

 

“Is the fact that we carry the blood of Arya Flint in our veins worth so little to you?

 

“You may be my liege lord’s girl and blood through my sister, but I am an old man, long past being of any use to anyone, and rather content to continue being so for however long the gods choose to let me continue suffering in living.

 

At that, the old man stood, fiercely glaring at his Aunt, and Jon knew that the likelihood of this ending at all well was likely all but gone at this point, but he had to keep trying, and so he said, “My father charged me with bringing you back to Winterfell to determine the truth one way or the other. Are you able to do that much? Or are you so weak and feeble to not climb the shallowest slope?”

 

Orell stared at Jon for a while, longer than Jon felt comfortable before Orell began to laugh which turned into a cough sounding as though he were an old pair of pipes that’d been unused for far too long. When he was finished, the old man simply rose and climbed the ladder to the loft of the cottage without saying a word.


	9. ARYA I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arya has her expectations and life choices scrutinized by her grandmother returned to life.

**ARYA**  
  
  
At first, she was glad when the stern Septa Mordane was absent from her lessons and her grandmother had taken her place. This feeling did not last for very long. After Jon and Aunt Lyanna had been sent to fetch an uncle of grandmother’s from clan Flint, Arya had been willing to try and start anew with her grandmother. After all, if she trusted Jon to fetch her uncle, surely, she must have now seen past Jon’s bastardy and seen him as a grandson like Robb or Rickon—well mayhaps not like Rickon, considering grandmother showered as much attention on little Rodrik and Rickon as mother was like for Bran. Still, Arya had been hopeful that a new wind had blown in with her grandmother’s change in attitude. This new wind of second chances did not blow for very long at all.  
  
  
Given that her grandmother was not a Septa, she had thought the emphasis on lady-like accomplishments would lessen. On the contrary, she was now beaten over the head with the “necessary” and “practical” aspects of all the same accomplishments. Today for instance instead of learning to just embroider the shirts purchased from White Harbor for her brothers, as Septa Mordane had been set to teach by mother, grandmother said they were to learn to make the shirts from scratch themselves, and then embroider them after.  
  
  
Sansa had asked, “But why should we make them when we can just as easily purchase them?”  
  
  
Their grandmother smiled and firmly said, “I know that you are quite used to the luxuries being a Lord Paramount’s daughter affords, but who knows what future awaits you once you’ve grown and been married. Mayhaps for some alliance rich in men but not coin you will be married off to a poorer and more distant house than you are used to. Expecting the luxuries of a Lord Paramount’s daughter for the rest of your life is a foolhardy notion, and should the worse occur, it is best for you to know how to make the best of a bad situation for unfortunately that is a woman’s lot in life.”  
  
  
“But I am going to marry the Prince!” protested Sansa as Arya worked on tracing the pattern she’d been given onto the bolt of linen that had been purchased from a merchant in Wintertown.  
  
  
“Has your father made such a betrothal?” asked grandmother.  
  
  
“No, but _I_ _am_ going to marry the Prince!” said Sansa.  
  
  
“And if your father decides that it would better suit him to marry you to some minor house far from home?”  
  
  
“He wouldn’t do that! Mother wouldn’t let him.”  
  
  
“I see. Well, let us hope your mother has as much influence on your father… for your sake. And you, Arya, will you also marry a Prince?”  
  
  
Arya smirked as she answered. “No.”  
  
  
Grandmother smiled at that. “You have more reasonable expectations I see. I’m glad to see that the Stark practicality wasn’t completely lost among your generation.”  
  
  
Arya nodded and said as she finished the outline of the piece she had been tracing, “I want to have my own keep and men that are loyal to none but me.”  
  
  
Grandmother was silent for a moment. Sansa smirked and crossed her arms defiantly, while Arya bit her lip, starting to fret the longer the silence went on. After a pause long enough to feel another Age of Heroes had come and gone, Grandmother at long last said, “An ambitious goal. And tell me, how do you expect to get your keep and men?”  
  
  
At this Arya did not have a ready answer, “Father—”  
  
  
Grandmother pounced on this. “Your father? Do you expect to inherit Winterfell then?”  
  
  
Arya immediately shook her head. “No. That’s Robb’s.”  
  
  
“I am glad we are agreed of that.”  
  
  
Arya then said, “But I could be a banner of Robb’s.”  
  
  
“So you would have some tower in your brother’s domains? Living off of the charity he provides you?”  
  
  
“I would not live off my brother’s charity!” protested Arya.  
  
  
“After the death of your father and until you marry it will be Robb’s obligation as the head of the family to see to your welfare. Anything and everything you will have will come from him. He may be so generous as to set you up in a separate keep, provided you can collect enough taxes to maintain the lifestyle—but to expect to be able to do that for long outside of the summer months here in the North is as much a foolhardy notion as it is your sister’s to expect she shall only marry the prince. That is of course unless I am mistaken and you plan to marry some small bannerman with a keep that you intend to run while he drinks himself into a stupor every night. For what other kind of man would let his lady wife—no matter who she was before their marriage—be a lord before him?”  
  
  
Her grandmother’s words stung, and Arya did not know what to say in response, so she knocked over the basket full of sewing materials and ran out the door.  
  
  
“Arya!” shouted Sansa from behind her, but Arya didn’t care as she hurried down a flight of steps and out of the Great Keep.  
  
  
She ran to the bridge overlooking the courtyard and practice yards, hoping to find Jon sitting there so they could talk, but no sooner had she reached it than she remembered that Jon wasn’t in Winterfell, and she felt lonelier than she had under her grandmother’s scrutiny. Instead she looked down to see mother watching as Bran practiced with Ser Rodrik’s squire. It was then, Arya hurried down a wooden staircase to the courtyard below and eagerly ran up to grab her mother’s hand. Her mother nearly jumped at the suddenness of her arrival, but after looking down to find Arya there, mother’s look of alarm softened before hardening once again.  
  
  
“Arya, you should be at your lessons.”  
  
  
“I hate my lessons. Can’t I stay with you?”  
  
  
Mother seemed as though she were about to question her further, in fact she opened her mouth but was distracted in that moment by the squire’s practice sword just barely missing the side of Bran’s head. Mother gasped as Bran managed to narrowly duck out of the swing and parry with a swipe at the squire’s knees. This allowed Arya to extend her grasp to more than just her mother’s hand, but to entwine her mother’s lower arm further into her clutches. Mother’s attention returned to her in that instant, and instead of continuing with what had likely been some sort of rebuke, Mother instead bit her own lip.  
  
  
“Your brother needs to pay more attention in his fights.”  
  
  
“He needs to get out of Jolley’s reach,” added Arya.  
  
  
“Aye, he does,” sighed mother.  
  
  
They stood there watching for a moment longer before Mother broke the silence again.  
  
  
“Arya, child, what don’t you like about your lessons with your grandmother?”  
  
  
“She’s bossy.”  
  
  
At that her Mother gave a little smile, that she immediately tried to hide by biting her lip once again, but Arya had seen it, and it endeared her mother to her even more in that moment.  
  
  
“She is used to being lady of this castle and having her way in all things. It is a hard thing to realize that you no longer are as important as you once were.”  
  
  
Arya thought on that for a time, even after her mother left to see to the kitchens and speak to the cook, and advised her to not tarry too long in the practice yard. Her mother had not been gone long when she saw Micah, the butcher’s boy, having snuck out of the larder to watch as Bran and Jolley continued to practice. They met eyes and nodded in agreement, both stealing off for the lichfield in the old courtyard of the castle, there they each picked up sticks and began to play at swords as they had been apt to do for a time. She had been at this for some time when her name was called out from the edge of the lichfield. Micah dropped his stick that instant and Arya stopped in confusion until she saw her lady grandmother approaching through the rows of graves.  
  
  
“You did not finish your lesson with me!” pronounced grandmother as she approached, and then noticed the stick in Arya’s hand and the stick at Micah’s feet. She then looked at Arya with a look which seemed odd to Arya’s perspective, as though she had seen a ghost in that instant.  
  
  
“Child, you are not a Mormont or a Wildling. A good Northern woman can fight if she needs to, but only when her men fail her. Most certainly not for fun, and most certainly not with smallfolk boys. Return to where you came from, boy.”  
  
  
“Yes, m’lady.”  
  
As Micah was stumbling about leaving, Arya glared at her grandmother and proudly proclaimed, “Micah is my friend!”  
  
  
Grandmother grabbed Arya’s wrist in that instant, rather tightly and dragged her from the lichfield while saying, “A rather cruel and selfish choice on your end. Be kind and gracious to the smallfolk, aye, but friends? One can never truly be friends with the smallfolk—it only encourages them to think of themselves as above their station—and this world is not kind to those who forget their place in it.”  
  
  
Arya only half heard her grandmother, only wishing to thrash back out and sting as much as she had been stung. “You’re the cruel one! You sent Jon away! He’s as much your grandson as Robb, and yet you sent him away!”  
  
  
“Your _bastard_ brother desired to be of use and left of his own choice. He will return, and how well he accomplished his task will better inform my opinion of him.”  
  
  
“Quit calling him that!” declared Arya, managing to slip her wrist from her grandmother’s grasp.  
  
  
“Bastard? It is what he is, to say otherwise would be to lie to both you and him. The world will not let him forget it, nor should you.”  
  
  
“Stop it! I hate you!” and before her grandmother could say another word, Arya ran off, not caring which way she ran, just so long as she found some place where she could hide away from her. She ran into the first building she saw, and already inside when she realized she was in her mother’s Sept—a building she very rarely ventured into outside of when her Mother insisted upon certain holy days. Inside she found the few who were faithful to the Seven at prayer—Septon Chayle leading the prayer as he swung a lantern which spread the smell of incense about the small Sept. The Septon looked at her standing awkwardly in the entrance and Arya, wanting to not look out of place, immediately joined the small group of the faithful on her knees. At this the Septon looked surprised, but smiled and continued on his chanting that was a call and response.  
  
  
When the prayer was over, the collected adherents stood up, and it was then that Arya realized she had been next to Septa Mordane.  
  
  
“Lady Arya, I am surprised to see you here, though not surprised to see you absent from your lessons,” said the Septa sternly but with a wry smile that Arya hadn’t noticed before as they filed out of the Sept together.  
  
  
“I was praying to the New Gods…”  
  
  
“I could see that, child,” said the Septa. “What I don’t understand is what has inspired this sudden desire to learn more of the Faith.”  
  
  
Arya was silent, seeing if she could find some excuse to put her there that Septa Mordane might accept more than the truth. In the end she settled for a half truth. “If the Old Gods gave me my grandmother, mayhaps the New could take her again.”  
  
  
“I do not presume to know the powers of the Old Gods, but to pray for such a thing as that when she had been taken in such a way is a wicked thing to pray for.”  
  
  
“Mayhaps I’m wicked then.”  
  
  
At this Septa Mordane stopped, took Arya’s shoulder and bent down to her level and said, “You are many things, Lady Arya, but wicked is not one of them, and I would loathe for you to ever become so. You are willful, stubborn, and disobedient, but you have in you a great sense of justice and a kindness that you try and hide. It would be a great tragedy if you ever snuffed that out.”  
  
  
And without a word further, Septa Mordane rose and departed, leaving Arya staring after the older woman in awe.


	10. EDDARD II

**EDDARD**

  
He had taken to secluding himself in his solar more often than he had been apt to—if only to keep his mind focusing on addressing matters concerning the North which could not wait for either Robert to arrive and leave, or his family to sort themselves out.  
  
  
In the end he had agreed to sending Jon after he himself had expressed a willingness to visit Orell for Rickon’s own sake. Neither his mother’s lecture, nor his father’s nudging on the matter had budged him when they both came to see him a week or so after the idea had first been broached in his mother’s confinement chamber. In fact, it had been the moment when he had told them both point blank that their suggestions were just that. His father had looked at him differently in that moment and with a brief nod and a smile he tried to suppress, took a step back from the table, while his mother, unaccustomed to having her own way thwarted, had much like Arya was want to do at times, stormed out of the room.  
  
  
“I could never say no to Arra directly,” his father had said once she had left the solar.  
  
  
It was rather unsettling to be sitting on this side of the table and have his father standing on the other, but it was what it was. A brief moment of silence passed between them.  
  
  
“I’ve been speaking with Ser Rodrik, he tells me you raised the banners after I… died, and fought well in the war that came after.”  
  
  
“I did what was required of the Lord of Winterfell,” said Eddard brusquely, unsure of where his father was taking the conversation.  
  
  
His father nodded and said, “You’ve won your men’s loyalty through the test of war—no man once having passed such a trial can afford to just give up the loyalty that engenders.”  
  
  
Eddard looked up at his father, who had approached and placed a hand on his shoulder as his father had been want to do when he’d been a boy, but the look on his face was one of pride that he’d seen given to Brandon when he’d come home with accomplishments he’d learned from their cousins in Barrowton. It was something, until this moment, Eddard had never realized he’d ever missed receiving.  
  
  
His father then sighed and continued, “And then, there is the matter of your mother to consider.”  
  
  
A long silence held between them as Eddard waited for his father to continue, as he knew was best for the nonce.  
  
  
When his father finally broke the silence, it seemed he was only barely constraining the emotions that lay beneath his visibly icy exterior. “The gods took her from me once and now have given her back to us and let the babe—Rodrik, live as well. I spent years without her, wanting her, missing her, wondering what might have been if she and Rodrik had lived. It’s a second chance I never thought I’d have, and the gods know when this all might come to an end—if it does. I… well, I would prefer to spend this time with her and Rodrik.”  
  
  
It was then that Eddard realized that this moment was the first time he felt he’d truly spoken with his father as an equal, and not a son. This was a different man standing before him than the Lord of Winterfell who’d been his father, one which he’d never let appear before Eddard before, but now did so.  
  
  
While Eddard had contemplated this, his father had looked at how Eddard had rearranged the room, noting that he’d had taken care to cover up the small window that looked down into the Great Hall below with a tapestry that Catelyn had sewn, the only contribution she had added to this room. His father fingered it and Eddard noted it was done with some care.  
  
  
“I don’t feel the need to look down upon my servants as they carouse or sleep.”  
  
  
“No good lord does, Ned,” was all that father had said, surprising Eddard. A short silence held between the two until his father turned around to address him directly.  
  
  
“I apologize on behalf of your mother. She’s a strong-willed woman, a quality I always admired about her. She was willing to stand up to me and tell me what she thought, good or ill. I’d been raised as a spoiled little snot-nosed brat—the jewel of my parents’ eyes—and she was the only one who didn’t simper or try to flatter, and that attracted me to her. She can be abrasive, but it’s who she is.”  
  
  
“And did you always do as she suggested?” asked Eddard.  
  
  
“No, but then I wasn’t one to step down from a challenge when discovered, and we were young and had other ways of resolving any tension between us when we… disagreed.”  
  
  
The surprise of that frankness must have shown on his face.  
  
  
“There’s a reason we had you and Brandon rather quickly after each other.”  
  
  
“That is not a solution I can take with her when we disagree.”  
  
  
“I would certainly hope not.”  
  
  
The two met each other’s eyes in that moment, and for the second time Eddard felt he saw his father as a man and not just as the Lord of Winterfell.  
  
  
“I’ll leave you to your work, Ned. But I hope you do consider sending someone to fetch Orell, even if it isn’t your son. It might help calm Arra down a bit, seeing someone she’d recognize in Winterfell.”  
  
  
And with that, his father had left the matter closed, not broaching it further. Jon had then entered his solar later that same evening and asked himself.  
  
  
“Why do you want to go, Jon? Truly.”  
  
  
Jon was silent for a moment before saying, “I think I could be of some use—”  
  
  
“You are not some servant who needs to feel useful in Winterfell.”  
  
  
“You called me your son.”  
  
  
It took Eddard a moment to recall, but when he thought back to his argument with his parents on the first day they’d arrived, he had indeed called Jon his son, probably for the first time in Jon’s memory. He had always tried to avoid saying as such, if only so when he told him the truth, it wouldn’t feel as though he’d lied to him his entire life—or at least that’s what he had told himself.  
  
  
“Haven’t I raised you as my son, in so much as I have been able?” asked Eddard, hoping that one day, when Jon would learn the truth, he would recall this question.  
  
  
Jon was quiet again, and Eddard had felt the full weight of accusation such silence held, and the old guilt returned to him.  
  
  
“A son is useful to his father, isn’t he?” asked Jon with an emotional break in his voice. He though quickly gathered himself enough to finish strongly, “Let me do this father.”  
  
  
Silence again passed between them, with Eddard only able to think of saying, “You shall likely miss the King’s visit if you leave now.”  
  
  
“And would you present me to him as your son if I stayed?” asked Jon pointedly.  
  
  
“I already have, Jon, though you certainly were too young to remember.”  
  
  
“And would you now?”  
  
  
There was no easy answer to his question. He obviously had tasted some of what he’d always desired, but Eddard had been reluctant to give more than he felt he could. Eddard could not take that from him now.  
  
  
Eddard took Jon’s shoulder and committed to what could not be unsaid, “I would. Just as I imagine Robert would introduce me to the natural son he’s named for me.”  
  
  
Jon nodded, the answer seemingly neither satisfying nor unsatisfying completely, to judge by the unguarded emotions that played across Jon’s face.  
  
  
“I won’t ask that of you, father. Instead let me be of use to you and to Rickon.”  
  
  
Eddard could then see that he had made a mistake in mentioning Robert’s own bastard son, and his guilt adding that to the list of his many mistakes concerning Jon, allowed him to let Jon go and fetch Orell.  
  
  
His guilt was later assaulted once again when Lyanna appeared in his solar, just as he had been about to retire for the night.  
  
  
“Allow me to go with my son,” she had come right out and said after shutting the door to the solar. It was the first time she had said the words “my son” with regards to Jon. She had read the silence between what he had said in the crypts, like she had always been able to do with him, and had whispered, “he’s mine, isn’t he?” in his ear at that time. And it had only been to her that he had broken his silence on the matter with a simple “Aye” in response. He had considered telling the rest of his family that day, in the crypts. In fact, it had been the sole reason he had gathered them there in the first place. But Brandon’s rash behavior had caused him to think better of that. And so, it had only been Lyanna who had learned the truth, and in a way that felt only natural. She had not asked further why he had claimed her son as his, in fact she had spent the time between the day in the crypts he’d confirmed her whispered question and this night watching Jon from afar with fervent interest, as if desperate to know who he was, but hesitant to approach like a shying horse seeing a new rider.  
  
  
“I am not your keeper, Lya, if you wish to leave with Jon, then I am not the one you need ask,” said Eddard feeling the awkwardness of the situation—being the lord while his father lived again.  
  
  
“No, but father will do as you say now, won’t he?”  
  
  
“Lya—”  
  
  
“He will, won’t he?”  
  
  
“Has he ever denied you anything you asked?” He would, of course, when she had asked him to end her betrothal, but this Lya did not know that yet.  
  
  
“But that was when mother was dead, and I… well, I always thought he gave me whatever I wanted because I reminded him of her. Truth be told, I don’t know what kind of man father is like with our lady mother alive again.”  
  
  
“Lya, do you think so little of a father’s love for his children?”  
  
  
“What am I supposed to think? Father always seemed to be thinking of her, he sent you and Brandon away, and left Old Nan to look after Benjen and I more oft than naught. And you, well I’ve seen how you treat your own children.”  
  
  
Eddard frowned, true, he had secluded himself too much in his solar that he hadn’t been as active in his children’s lives since his family’s return, but he took great offense at being accused this by his sister who in many respects was still a girl.  
  
  
Reading his mind, she then clarified, “I’m talking about my son who you pass as your own, not your other children.”  
  
  
“I treat Jon as my son as much as I am able.”  
  
  
“You might be able to do more by him than you currently do.”  
  
  
“Mayhaps. And tell me, Lya, how do you think that would make my lady wife feel? And how do you think she’d treat Jon if I did more by him? I have made both their lives incredibly difficult enough as it is.”  
  
  
“You should have told her the truth.”  
  
  
Eddard leaned back in his chair and shook his head.  
  
  
“That Jon was the trueborn son to you and Rhaegar Targaryen? That you had forced me to promise to protect him from more foolish Targaryen loyalists like the Kingsguard who had been willing to throw their lives away fighting for him, or sought out by assassins paid with Tywin Lannister’s gold possibly perpetuating a war that had already taken father and Brandon’s lives and might take mine and Benjen’s had it lasted longer. It was cruel but it was a safer fate for him than having his head smashed in by Lannister soldiers or raised among a crowd of schemers who cared more for their own power in pushing forward his claim than they did his safety and might be as like to kill him as rule through him. That was your only concern as you lay dying was his safety above all else. And safety to you then meant Winterfell.”  
  
  
_Promise me, Ned you’ll bring us both home. Promise me._  
  
  
“So calling him your bastard was the safest way you could think of protecting him?”  
  
“No, it was the safest way you could think of.”  
  
  
There was a momentary pause as Lya looked stunned at his pronouncement, but it was the truth.  
  
  
“You were feverish and dying, and mayhaps if you hadn’t you might have thought of another way to have him be in Winterfell and safe at the same time, but you were right in the end. I’ve had years to think on it, and it was the only thing that made sense. He had too much of the Stark look to be a foundling I’d found and adopted out of affection. Brandon and father had been dead too long to father him, Benjen was too young and in the North besides, and even if I had claimed he was your bastard son instead of a trueborn, schemers and flatterers would have sought him out like they did Daemon Blackfyre.”  
  
  
Lya for her sake seemed to truly consider what he had said. And so for his part he admitted, “Safe is not always pretty, nor just, sometimes it’s a damn curse to live day in and out with, but at least you can live with safety.”  
  
  
“Will you tell him the truth?”  
  
  
“Aye, when he’s a man grown, and not before.”  
  
“You should tell your Lady wife then as well. I know if I were in her shoes, I’d appreciate knowing the truth, unless of course you have reason to doubt the loyalty of your wife?”  
  
  
Eddard gave Lya a stare then which signaled the conversation was over.  
  
  
At that Lya had left the solar, and they did not speak of Jon again before she left. Truth be told, father hadn’t needed too much convincing to allow Lya to travel with Jon. All that had needed to be mentioned was his concerns for Robert to arrive and discover her alive again—that alone could send the Kingdom into an uproar. If Jon would be gone for as long as the King was in Winterfell, then having Lya with him would be the best thing for the realm, for Lya, for Robert even. And so Lya and Jon had gone off to seek out Orell, and hopefully not return until Robert had left.  
  
The next issue that came to his attention as he finished signing some letters patent was broached by Catelyn, who slid silently into his solar and startled him when she broke the silence of the room.  
  
  
“I have concerns about your mother.”  
  
  
Ned breathed deeply for a moment, sensing the direction this conversation would take even before it had been uttered.  
  
  
“You’ll recall how when she complained of Septa Mordane’s lessons with the girls, I suggested she teach them herself if she was so concerned?”  
  
  
He sighed, through down his quill, and leaned back in his chair to ask, “What has she done now?”  
  
  
“I have no complaints as to what she is teaching our daughters, it’s more her manner with which she deals with them.”  
  
  
“Have you tried speaking with her about it?”  
  
  
“I would not be here had I not already tried being civil to her. Truth be told, were she not your mother I’d have thrown her out of the castle for the way she behaves at times.”  
  
  
“What is this manner which upsets you so?”  
  
  
“She brusquely dismisses our daughters wants and desires calling them Southron fancies while harping on needing to be small-minded and overly practical. The girls are 12 and 10, they should have some time to be girls still before their first moonbloods.”  
  
  
Eddard sighed and said he would speak with his mother. This satisfied Catelyn for the nonce and she took her leave to talk with Vayon Poole about the need for extra candles to be brought in from White Harbor for Tyrion Lannister of all people, who was listed as part of the party accompanying the King.  
  
  
He found his mother in the nursery, finishing feeding his newest brother.  
  
  
She began without even waiting for him to say anything. “If you’ve come to scold me for how I’ve been instructing my granddaughters, your lady wife and your father have already broached the subject with me.”  
  
  
“The girls are rather young for such merciless lessons.”  
  
  
His mother was silent for a moment before answering.  
  
  
“Your grandmother would’ve agreed with you, but I learned at a young age that to be a daughter of a great house, even a lowly branch of one, one must be prepared or be pushed aside to one’s detriment. My mother ensured I knew how to do many things that a daughter of a great house most often need not know, and she failed to teach me much of what I needed to know. I learned the hard way through competing with other more accomplished young ladies for your father’s attention, then I learned more still through my marriage, and all that hard work led me to look at the world as it was, and I swore to myself that no girl of my blood would have to go through what I had. I would do better by them…give them more realistic expectations and goals...”  
  
  
Eddard was quiet, but not unmoved by his mother’s explanation, as there was a ring of truth to it that struck him. Afterall, hadn’t he decided to be a different parent than his father had been? He had rejected some offers from his bannermen to foster a son or daughter and instead chose that he wouldn’t do as his father had done in splitting them up so. That had led to the rift with Benjen after all, who had charged him with the accusation of not really knowing Lya as well as he did, nor knowing what she’d truly wanted. True, Ben had been little more than a boy at the time, but the gulf between them when Eddard had confronted him about what his inaction had led to couldn’t have been plainer than a black raven against snow. There still was that sense of separation, even when Ben visited to this day. Often, he’d “communicate” to him through Luwin or his children than speak to Eddard directly. The gulf had been nursed into a deep divide, and Eddard did not want his children to experience that in their relationships with each other. Could he truly therefore blame his mother for wanting to do things differently from her own mother?  
  
  
After some silence he finally said, “I can understand all that. But in the end it changes nothing as they are my daughters, not yours, and they will be raised as Catelyn and I agree to see fit.”  
  
  
“As you say,” was all his mother said as she tucked the fussy Rodrik into his crib.  
  
  
His silence in that next moment was taken as an opportunity for his mother to change the subject, as she turned to face him and quickly asked, “What are you planning on telling the King about us?”  
  
  
That was something he had given some thought to as he’d sorted through the letters patent and his family had yet to disappear from where they had arrived. “I will introduce you as my cousins.”  
  
  
It was true enough, technically given how the family tree twisted and cousin had married cousin in his parents’ generation. From either way you looked at it, he was equally part cousin to his own parents. It was not a lie… but it was not the entire truth either, and that little bit nibbled away at his own conscience. What good would serve from telling Robert or the rest of the realm the truth? And in this way, them being some cousins of his, they could have another chance at having lives of their own, as his father wanted, as Lya would want, and as Brandon deserved.  
  
  
His mother nodded curtly and said, “Not a stupid idea, but what pray tell, would you do, Ned, if the servants should wag their tongues?”  
  
  
That he had already considered and in truth had dealt with in the past when whispers of Ashara Dayne had already gotten out of hand in Winterfell.  
  
  
“I have already dealt with those who gossip out of turn in the castle, years ago. And if need be, I can serve a reminder to those who might have loose tongues. Anything said now will be taken for superstition, mistaken identity, or drunken ramblings.”  
  
  
At this his mother nodded again, seeming to take his word for the nonce, or at least until it proved inadequate otherwise.  
  
  
She though did have one final question, “And what of your grey rat?”  
  
  
Eddard didn’t even dignify that with a response, choosing instead to snort, and leave his mother to the nursery.

 

 


End file.
